Sovereign
by BrightestDarkness
Summary: Adrift at the heart of an eternal ballet of emptiness, Doom drifted; a god unmade, a tyrant broken; an exile to a new world resembling, but not matching, the universe that he knew. Standing at the precipice of a new reality, he finds himself faced with a growing dilemma. Should he conquer this existence? Or should he be better than who he was and save it?
1. Prodigal Son 1-1

Adrift at the heart of an eternal ballet of emptiness, Doom drifted; a god unmade, a tyrant broken.

At the climax of his greatest, and final duel with his nemesis, the truth had been drawn out of him. A truth that crumbled an unbreakable will, a truth that sundered the very composition of existence as they could remember it.

For all his genius of science, for all his mastery of sorcery, for all the powers of the Beyonders, Richards bested him still, defeating him without room for uncertainty or doubt, leaving Doom to ignore the seeds of his own torment, his own failure. The Multiverse was Richard's now. His to do as he saw fit now, with his family returned to him. And once again, Doom found himself alone in the dark, accompanied by nothing but his thoughts and silence. This time though, he wasn't behind the borders of his own kingdom, where his people loved him, within the warded battlements of steel and spell that formed his castle walls. No. This was exile; limbo, in its ultimate form.

The invincible beast that it was, Doom's pride remained, roaring his chest in agony gutted but unextinguished. And though that unflinching will refused to die like that of any lesser man's, though Doom refused to dissolve away into the nothingness and blend in with the dark, a withering winter began to set into his bones. There was no more hate left to kindle, no more rage that he could direct or muster at some terrible demon or hated foe. The admission had left him empty. Doom was, for perhaps the first time, utterly beaten.

And he had admitted it.

Worse still. He had admitted it to Richards.

" _I always believed that you could be better than what you are,"_ came the words of Reed Richards _,_ echoing through Doom's mind. Was he truly that much of a better man?

Was that why Doom couldn't stop hearing his voice, echoing through the recesses of his mind?

" _Work,"_ said Richards. " _Work, damn you! I did the spell right! The spell was composed to its exact specifications! I followed the book, damn you!  
_  
Wait. That wasn't Richard's voice. That was a girl's voice. What the hell? Doom frowned beneath the mask. Was he going insane? Doom shook himself of such thoughts. That was impossible. Doom did not go insane.

" _Come on,"_ echoed the voice, desperation palpable in each syllable. "C _ome on your piece-Shit! Why isn't this spell working! I'm doing it right! Come on! Come on!"  
_  
Far in the distance, a small pinhole opened as the shadows snapped apart in a kaleidoscopic intrusion of light, bright and burning. _Sorcery._ Doom knew the taste of magic better than most would ever fathom even after lifetimes of study and training. There was no doubt here. Someone was drawing him away from here. The darkness fractured away as snow drifted into the nothingness, bleeding white into the black. Doom reached out with a hand and pressed through, breaking through the thin wound between dimensional borders.

Perhaps this wasn't a limbo after all.

Perhaps Richards had placed him here for a reason. 

_**Sovereign  
**_  
 _Chapter 1.1  
Prodigal Son_

"Damn it," the girl cursed, knees bruised for hours of kneeling at the center of the circle. The incense had long since burned itself out, leaving nothing but smoke stolen by the wind. The chalk scribed sparking patterns drawn beneath her feet-a hasty, panic scribbled patchwork of spells invoking extradimensional powers-had been rubbed and smeared across her coat. She knew that she had failed. She knew. But where her mind was aware, her heart was weak, and so, like the child that she hated being she sulked in silence. A few disobedient tears spilled out from her, drawing her ire. She rubbed her sleeve across her face and winced. He jaw was still swollen. She about forgot about that. Now the taste of metal from the rifle's butt returned. She sulked harder, kneeling there in silence.

These days, life was like a box of assholes: no matter what she chose to do, it always ended with her getting shit on in some way. Still, in spite of this setback, she could not give up and succumb to despair. Not with her entire clan counting on her. If the demon summoning was a bust for her, then it was onto the next plan. Whatever that plan was.

"Why are you crying, girl."

She froze, then looked up, face breaking into a grim smile as she greeted the figure that shadowed over her. He stood at the center of her circle a towering titan of chrome cloaked beneath a skin of green, twin suns of glowing green blazing from behind the sockets of a rent metal mask, barely hanging on as it is.

Yes _. Yes!_ She hadn't failed after all. The must've just been a delay in the spell is all. She wasn't a practiced sorceress like her mother but the talent she did have. This proves it! She fought to stop herself from doing a merry little jig before her new minion, suppressing the spike of adrenaline with a facade of calm, domineering coolness that would be expected from a warlock worthy of respect. "I am not crying, demon."

"You were not?" said Doom, looking down at the girl, lying through her teeth. "Truly? Then I assume all the cursing was part of the summoning as well then."

She frowned at him, golden brows furrowing. For a creature with a frozen metal face, this demon had some lip. "Silence, demon, your will is mine to command now!" Drawing her arms across herself diagonally, sigils and runes sparked into light across her limbs as she tried to finish her binding spell. "By the will of the Dark-the dread-" She froze. What were the words again? It was the dark something. The ritual invoked powers of a being from a parallel dimension. She just needed to remember what it was.

Meanwhile, the demon folded its arms as waited. "Dread Lord Dormammu?"

"Yes!" Wait. Why was he helping her? Nevermind. Finish the spell. "Dread Lord Dormammu, I hereby invoke the binds-the binds of..." Her left arm promptly fizzled out. She waved it. It flickered like a dying light and went out again. "Shit."

Doom fought the urge to shake his head. She played the part of sorceress as best as she could but he knew a neophyte when he saw one. Sorcery was an art as much as it was a coded pattern in the tapestry of existence.

Though her fundamental aspects of the spell were woven cast well enough, she held little knowledge over how to manipulate the dimensional forces she was drawing on through the summoning-sigils sparking into nothingness on the ground. Such being the case, her talent couldn't be denied but her attempt was foolish at best. Even a beginner knew that personal energies were the safest to wield, universal energies most practical to manipulate, and dimension energies for complex and varied, but also dangerous. The best case for her would have been a spell failure. The worst case often could not be imagined by mortal minds.

The outer dimensions were not nice places for little girls.

"So," said the girl, taking an interest at the snow on the ground, "the spell didn't work."

"No."

"Which means I can't control you."

"No more than a gnat can command a thunderstorm."

There was a slight tremble in her lip. "...are you going to eat me now?"

Oh, the poor foolish girl. "Not before the moon hangs low and you finish summoning my seasoning."

"Seasoning?" she asked.

Doom fought the urge to massage his temples. "I'm not going to eat you, foolish child. Nor am I a demon."

"Oh," she said. "Well. What are you, then?"

He folded his arms. "Doom."

She blinked. "Doom?"

"Doom."

"That's your name?"

"Yes," said Doom.

"Doom," she said, trying the name out on her tongue. "Are you sure you're not a demon. Because that sounds like the name a demon might have."

"Doom does not lie."

She fixed him with a questioning stare. "Sounds like something a demon might say."

" _Girl_ ," said Doom, patience wearing thin.

"So, is this one name thing popular among demons?" asked the girl. "Do you all have one-word names. Like...Madonna?"

What? What was this stupid child fixating on? "What do were you trying to achieve with the summoning, girl?" Doom interrupted.

"Baron Vladimir's men. They took my clan. They said that they needed new workers for the quarry and that we were breaking the law by being on the Baron's property." She stopped the story to spit, intending to blatantly disrespect the Baron's decree. She fell silent after that, unable to meet his eyes. "So they did. And I ran."

"Baron Vladimir Fortunov?" asked Doom. Doom remembered a Baron Vladimir from almost a lifetime ago. Hatred warmed Doom from the inside like rising bile, mixing with that sweet, pleasant memory of his terrified, gasping face as the light finally left his eyes. Doom could still feel his fingers wrapped around the despot's throat. "The Baron of Latveria?"

"Yes," said the girl, eyes widening. "Are you psychic as well?"

"No," said Doom, coldness brewing from within him like a cauldron. Now he understood. An alternate Earth, or universe. That's where this was. Wherever this reconstruction of existence was, Richards had chosen this domain for him. But why?

"Demon?" asked the girl.

"Doom," came his words, colder rumbling like an avalanche in the distance, "is no demon. I am infinitely more than a slave of the hellish dimensions could ever fathom to be. Do not make me repeat myself on this again."

She lifted both her hands in surrender. "Okay. Okay. Well, whatever you are," said the girl, "I still wish to bargain. Help me. Help me save my people from the Baron's guards. Help me kill the Baron. And in exchange...in exchange, I'll give you my soul."

"Your soul." Doom looked down at her through his eyes with an impassive expression. What did this fool expect him to do with her soul? Sell it to some demons for a flesh-cloak to gain a minor boost to his spellcasting abilities? Did she think him a dealer in souls? Souls were a terrible mechanism for powering things considering the potential for leakage. Even worse as a means of exchange considering the liquid nature of spiritual energies. How ignorant was she the basic fundamentals of sorcery?

She bit her lip. "I...I also have this dagger." She drew a dagger from her hip. It was a rusted thing that was around as dangerous as it could be used to cut. "And some mutton too. It's a week old but still edible." She showed him the mutton as well, discolored and rough meat that it was. Doom wager that he could have offered those chunks to a starving wolf and it would have chosen to roll over and die instead.

"You don't have much to bargain with at all, do you girl?" asked Doom

"What part of the Baron took my people and everything we own don't you understand?" spat the girl. "Are you going to help me or not? Because if you're not, just tell me or eat me or do whatever but stop wasting my time!"

From the back of Doom's mind, arrogance, though bruised and battered, came roaring back to life. Who was this girl to _dare_ make demands of Doom? By what right did she have to command him? By what power could she compel him? Pity? Weakness?Incompetence? Why should he be compelled to obey a child's orders? What was she compared to Doom? If not by the grace that she was a daughter of Lavteria, then Doom would have...

He would have...

 _I always believed that you could be better than what you are_

Richards. Damned Richards. Damn him and his damn words. Damn him for winning.

Damn him for proving himself right.

"Very well," sighed Doom, reaching down with an open gauntlet. "I. Dr. Victor Von Doom, the _rightful_ ruler of Latveria, accept your request for help."

The girl looked at him with disbelieving eyes. "Rightful ruler? Did you just declare yourself king? What kind of shit is that?"

Doom glared.

"Fine, fine, take Latveria," she said, gripping his gauntlet tightly with her small hands. "I. Valeria, of Clan Zefiro hereby...thank you?"

As her name left her lips, his hand nearly crushed her's in a vice grip.

...

 _A/N: Yes. I dumped after-Incursion Doom into the MCU. This can only go so poorly for everyone involved. And, not to worry, Doom is going to absolutely loathe the constant stream of MCU humor that keeps happening around him for little to no reason. Oh, and brief history lesson, that flesh-cloak thing, that isn't some weird metaphor. There was actually an arc in which Doom sacrifices a former lover to gain a skin-armor to be a better wizard in an attempt to magic Richards and friends to death. That...was a disputed storyline, titled "Unthinkable." As you can infer, the characterization of Doom has ranged from a brilliant megalomaniac that was as honorable and benevolent to his people as he is badass against his foes, to giant raving asshole to everyone he thinks he's better than (which is everyone whose name doesn't begin with Dr. and ends rhyming with Room), to being a hacker wearing trash bags. Whatever you think about the guy, you got to give it to him: his portrayals really haven't been the most stable over the years._


	2. Prodigal Son 1-2

_1.2_

What manner of cruel mockery was this? Thunder rumbling with hatred in his veins, Doom found himself faced with a reality that repeated the past too closely to be an occurrence and struck at him to personally to be a random moment of chance.

Valeria-or at least an alternative version of her-was standing before him in the aftermath of the same decision that his mother tried to make all those years ago. The deviation had been minor. The spells that they worked were patchworks and crossroads that ran deep and dark into eldritch dimensions that drank every last bit of value from the fools that invoked them. By merit of fate created or born from chance, she had drawn Doom from the void rather than some dark entity that would have offered her power beyond conception, without mentioning the cost that it would bring. Cynthia Von Doom, his dear mother, learned this better than most when she gained terrible powers over the material to wield against her oppressors.

With the exchange being the lives of every child in the village that she attempted to enact her vengeance in.

"Motherfucker," cried Valeria, shaking her throbbing hand. She was more than a simile to both Valerias, bearing the golden locks of the girl that called Doom uncle and the grey eyes of the woman that called him a coward. Her features were thin, starved but vivacious, like a fire flickering in defiance in the midst of a thunderstorm. Her's was a life and light that would not be extingushed. So was Doom's will then. And so is Doom's will now. "Shake! Doom. You're supposed to shake the hand, not squeeze my fingers out of their sockets. God." She frowned at her middle finger as she tried to extend it. "At least my favorite one is still working. What was that, some kind of ritual to see if I'm worthy of your respect or something? Ow."

"I...no," Doom said, finally registering her words. "It was a miscalculation. Nothing more."

She glared at him with her arms against her hips, wincing as she pushed too hard on her right hand. "Most people usually apologize when they make mistakes, you know."

Doom responded, words rolling out of him on instinct, woven into him from habit alone. "Most people are not Doom. I will note your weakness and adjust accordingly."

"My weakness? _My weakness?"_ Valeria glared at him briefly, before rolling her eyes. "We will have words about this later, Doom. For now, try not 'miscalculate' anything else. Other than the Baron's men, of course. When it comes to them, then have at it."

"Very well," said Doom, fighting the urge to look away from the girl. Not even his armor could shield him from the discomfort she birthed from within him. And, almost as quickly as it came, the shame died within him beneath the hammer of his will. Fear was unbecoming of Doom and so he chose never to succumb to fear. Not even in the face of this. "Let us begin our task, then. Where did they take your clansmen?"

Valeria stared down at the dirt.

"You do not know?"

"I ran when the Baron's men came," she said, quietly. "I know they were taken. I just don't know where."

"And how long ago were they taken?" he asked.

"A week ago, maybe," said Valeria, voice shaking. "I wasn't abandoning them! I needed time to gather materials and learn the spe-"

Doom extended a hand, interrupting her. "Do you have something of theirs? Something from a member of your family, perhaps?"

She began fishing through her pockets quite violently. "Where is it? Where? Ah!" She ripped out a stained flask, depressed by several dents. Dents that likely came from gunfire, judging from the dimensions of the deformations. "Will this work?"

She placed it in his open palm. "I shall see," he said.

A sympathetic tracking spell was likely one of the easier spells to weave. It relied strongly on the personal energies leftover between the object's owner and the object. Some sorcerers claimed that deep connections helped strengthen the spell and the desired effect. Some sorcerers were also insufferable blots on the encrustation of humanity that also ate wolf testicles to ingrain the essence of nature in themselves, for whatever mental deficiencies that suffered from. No. The true bind between person and object is a stain of their physical essence.

Old blood stains, for example, made a great medium. And judging from the flask, the man liked to bleed a lot.

"Wait," said Doom. "And do not speak. Unless you absolutely need me. I will return to myself shortly."

"What?" she said, "Where are you-" Her words faded with the swipe of a single finger, as Doom ignited the astral tether made present through the spell.

Surrendering to the sensation of the astral pull, he released his spirit from his shell, untethered by physics or the material as it crossed the world at superluminal speeds, the bond driven by concentrated patterns within the spell at Doom's behest, desperate to reach wholeness again. Through snow coated forests and blizzard capped mountains, he traveled between the instants of a second. Time worked differently without a mind to perceive, tied only be a will to shape. Taking in the flickering towns and environments below, the discomfort came back to haunt him.

Latveria. But not quite. The towns looked much the same as they did when he was young; impoverished and ruined quarters of rotting wood and endless misery. The best houses were always left for the men of the guard who acted extensions of the Baron's will. The men who, in this case, has also been altered. Minutely so, but almost certainly. He did not remember the Baron's men to have American-supplied weaponry for one. The Vladamir that he knew was little more than a sniveling mongrel of the Soviet Union. It seems that he is the oppositions dog in this reality with the rifles and tanks he men operated within the town centers.

Shaking thoughts tied to the man that he was going to kill-again, for the first time-Doom felt the bond bloom with strength. Until he finally settled overhead a camp that ran across the base of a mountain, with echoing cracks of pickaxe chipping against veins within a face of stone. Rows and rows of suffering people slaved away for glory and wealth of worthless cur who would rape the very spirit of the nation he had ascended to govern over till the day he died. The able-bodied swung metal against rock. The small and young ran lines of dynamite into gaping wounds they carved into the mountain, often unwillingly, with a parent placed nearby to a guard should they attempt anything. Then, there were those that had other uses for the guards and the workers that earned that special favor.

Those were the ones that took the longest to come back together.

All of a sudden, Doom felt a jubilant warmth surge through his mind as he realized a soon to be realized truth.

He was going to get to strangle the bastard again, to watch as he struggled vainly as his lungs gave out and his eyes went empty. It was just a shame that the sweetness of this thought was nothing compared to the bitterness of watching the state that Latveria was in. Again.

The camps that nestled behind the lines of the enslaved were pitful constructs, concrete cubicles that surrounded cages, open to the weather, filled with far too many people fed far too little. The taste of death reeked even past the veil of the astral. Downwards Doom followed the pull, into a cell isolated from all the rest. Where they kept most the hard cases then. Through the walls, Doom drifted through and found the grandfather that he sought. Being beaten within an inch of his life by men with metal bars, taking the torment with gritted teeth and grunting taunts. Admirable. But foolish.

Then, as he collapsed backward, look up at the ceiling with blood pouring out from his gums, Doom suddenly realized that he knew the man. He knew the man all too well.

 _Boris?_

...

 _A/N: So, a brief lesson on magic in Marvel._

 _The three magical sources in Marvel are Personal (mental, chi-based, or life-force that usually cost hitpoints to cast or were based in the astral projections) energies, Universal energies (patterns that constitute this home reality, like physics for example), and Extra-Dimensional energies (the power to let you ruin the physical boundaries of the world because some dark lord gave you that benefit.) In the movie, there are a bit more boundaries established but they still aren't that clear on what is limited by the mage's creation. For the comics, the rules can go stick its head up Fin Fang Foom's ass because shit tends to just happen based on the power of drama in most cases. It also doesn't help that many writers like to showcase magic as "pew-pew magic missile" due to the fact that hand-blasts are essential for everyone to have, and energy projection is handed out at the dollar store in the 616 verse._

 _To put it plainly, magic is a plot-tool driven by how tired the writer is of the story._

 _There is this tabletop game called Mage the Ascension, in which you play as a mage that also can manipulate the variables of reality to reshape existence. They occupy spheres of force, spirit, correspondence, time, matter, and prime. Ignoring prime for a moment, the rest of the spheres are all basically achievable and abusable by any Marvel mage of significant ability. Copy yourself into infinite copies. Blow stuff up. Cancel out black holes through rips in space. You know, stuff that kills a story dead when doing poorly. Thankfully, there is a counter to this._

 _You see, in Mage, reality will twat you over the head if you dick around too much._

 _In Marvel, someone might get mad at you. Or something. That's it._

 _What Marvel mages are, contrarily, are people who can abuse the living shit out of reality without any consequence, other than who they bargain with and their ability to handle the power. Consider that._

 _Now consider Dr. Doom's forte-the combination of Rick and Morty styles of soft-technology mixed with an even softer magical-system. In writing this sentence, I might have given Brandon Sanderson the poop-bleeds with how soft this diet is._

 _If you ever get the chance, read some old Dr. Strange comics. You'll understand what I am speaking of afterward._

 _Anyway, that's a long-winded way of me saying that magic has boundaries in Marvel, but not explicitly rules. Which, by that nature, binds it to narritanium-the unbreakable material that every writer needs when the source material is looser than soup._


	3. Prodigal Son 1-3

_1.3  
_

Memories, no matter how vivid or how well-recalled, tended to be shaded in perception. What more were memories than a rather parochial recollection of events from a single pinhole in a galaxy of tunnel-visioned beings. For all of Doom's eidetic memory, there was no possibility of evading the oncoming tide of dissonance as he found himself bearing witness to the torture of a man best described as a familiar stranger; his appearance recognized, but never with that expression, nor with that demeanor, his face locked in a snarl bearing a bloodstained grin.

His spat, a sputter of crimson and sinews of flesh parted his gums splashing across his own face. He laughed "Is this all, then? Is this the best that the dogs of Vladimir can give? If I would have known this-that-that I was to be serviced by soft-handed little boys here in Latveria, I would have escaped from Stalin's gulags ten years in advance so I could come here for an extended vacation." His eyes betrayed nothing of his pain. With the way that his breath came, ragged and quick, along with the sunken pit on his midsection, it was obvious that his ribs were broken.

The beatings continued with diminished vigor. The two guards were young and strong, but tiring by this point. From beyond the reach of the flickering light that swung above to the two haggard interrogators, a man lit up a cheap cigar, parting the shadows around him. Light illuminated an aged, portly man in an officer's uniform. A captain by the stars indicated on his shoulders. With a motion of his hands, the two interrogators backed off and ceased in their torture.

"That's enough for now. We'll need him alive for the execution. Gypsies like this one, so they should get the privilege of watching him die in person." He glanced down at Boris with a disdainful stare. "Are you still with us, old soldier?"

Old soldier? Another divergence? Boris never fought in any war or any service beyond the revolution of Latveria.

Boris laughed with a gargling sputter of blood still stuck in the back of his throat. " _Da."  
_  
Kneeling down next to him, the Captain sighed. "You can make this easy on us, Boris. Swear fealty to the Baron. Admit to the crimes of you and your people. You will be spared from the execution. There is no need to die over such a pointless thing as pride. There is a better way."

"I-I-I wan-want," Boris wheezed, feigning weakness.

"Yes?"

The bloodied man grinned. "I want to know if the Baron's cock is actually as thick as that cigar on your lips."

If Doom still had eyes in the astral dimension, he would have blinked. Cock was not a word he heard often. Never by Boris. In fact, that was far too crass for them to even be the same person by this point.

Fuming, eyes burning with the hate of a man defied in spite of his power and authority by a creature he deemed less than himself. "Fine. Die, then. Makes no difference to me. But before you go, I will have you watch as I break your people before you."

With a savage cry, the Captain booted Boris across the jaw as hard as he could. Without effect. "You should leave the beatings to the other two, fat man."

"Get him out of here," said the Captain, as the two guards began to drag Boris out of the cell. "Clean him before his execution later. He needs to look as whole as he can for best results." He took a puff of his cigar in irate breaths. "Wait." The guards stopped. "After you're done, bring me a girl from his people. The younger the better. I have some stress I need to work through before conducting the execution."

This Captain was going to die. He needed to. Not for some primal desire to sate some bestial rage or the need to bring justice to this land. No. There was a cost to achieving any goal, especially in rulership, Doom knew this well. The secret to continually attain victory in these struggles was simple: have someone else pay the price for you. And so, Doom had found the flint that he would use to ignite the downfall of the Baron, a single sacrifice to be spent as a rallying cry from the hopeless and a spreading cancer for the tyrannical.

Drifting out from above the thick of the cells, Doom memorized the paths and positions within the camp. It didn't take him long to find where Boris and a few select others were to soon be executed as a show of force for the other prisoners within the camp.

The square was a single concrete slab placed at the center of the camp. How telling that the heart of the prison was to made of stone and stained with death, placed in a position for ease of viewing so all could receive their continued dose of despair.

Foolish. It was of little wonder that these guards had to kill so much. They've failed to grasp the very basic tenets of fear itself. Fear came from hope. Namely, the loss of hope and the possibility that they are forced away from the comforts of the present into a new future of ruin and despair. To begin at such a boundary leaves no room for fear, only surrender or resistance. A rat will fight like a demon when there is no possibility of survival left but will go willingly towards certain death if a potential alternative for escape presents itself. This was the way that you created the shackles that would ensnare the hearts of the weak. All the officer and his men were doing were engendering more rage and fury within the hearts of the downtrodden.

Which was good. They were like dry wood, bleak and dead to most, but more than capable of being ignited by the proper impetus.

Such as a execution in their favor for once.

Remembering an undisturbed patch of woods just before the north gate of the camp, Doom set an astral marker to serve as a tether for a safe arrival. He would deal with the contingent at the entrance and draw their attention first. Then, the rest could follow at a pace of his leisure.

Like a rubber band, he snapped back into his body, years of training killing the instinct to stumble as he became of flesh again. "I've returned."

"Did you find my grandfather?" she asked, hiding the worry in her voice. "Or have they already..."

"No. He yet lives," said Doom. "That will soon change lest we depart now."

"Depart," said Valeria. "Using what? Do you have a plane hiding underneath your cloak?"

Planes were far too slow. Doom had something else in mind instead.

Teleportation was something that any journeyman mystic or sufficiently studied quantum physicist could achieve within a few years. Doom was more than both of those things put together.

For most, there was a need for a crutch, such as a ring or a series of devices meant to stitch and tether the dividing boundaries together for a requisite amount of instances. Such were the most basic vectors regarding the transportation of matter across vast distances unbounded by standard spatial parameters. Then came the question of whether the method would entail the rapid mass migration of molecules followed by rapid reconstruction-which tended to be the scientific way of the action-or an act of altering the corresponding geometries of the universe's present energies through the creation of a wound between boundaries, or a portal of sorts as the mystics appreciated so much.

For Doom, his armor served as all the tether he would need to anchor himself. For the other end, he all that was needed was the opening of a spell. With the crackle of a sorcerous pattern sundered the tapestry of the universe, a simmering boundary tore into the world before them as a kaleidoscopic wound opened in-between places, the other side of the veil growing transparent as the fractured fabric of space began to shift in tessellating blocks. Through a thicket of foliage, Valeria could see the prison camp and the mountain that shadowed its horizon.

"Whoa," said Valeria, reaching out into the kaleidoscope of moving geometries. Her fingers passed through the layer of distorted lengths. It felt as though she pushed through a thin layer of tissue.

"Don't brush against the edges," said Doom. "You will not so much lose your fingers as they would be lost in the external of dimensions while still being connected to you by technicality."

Valeria blinked as her arms snapped back to her sides. "Got it. Fingers in other dimensions. Very bad."

They stepped through the other side without much fanfare, emerging across the vastness of kilometers upon kilometers in an instant. Behind them, the tessellating kaleidoscope slotted itself back into place without a sound. It was like they stepped through thin air.

Before them, was the main road leading down to the camp. In the distance, trucks rumbled along narrowly paved dirt rows, carrying more workers in transport lines. From one end of the mountain to the other, the prison of servitude stretched. There was no way they were going to be able to cover all that ground in time and liberate everyone. The area it encompassed was just too vast.

"Damn," cursed Valeria, balking at the size of their task. For all Doom's might, he was but one, and she was barely a fledgling sorceress with a rusted knife. How could they liberate those within while also facing down the guards? "Doom-"

"Come," said Doom, moving with purposeful strides.

"What?" cried Valeria, gesturing at him wildly. The maniac either didn't hear or didn't care, walking out the foliage toward a parked convoy armored vehicles blockading the entrance to the camp flanked by two guard towers without any hint of a care. " _Shit!_ Doom, wait!"

She could hear the rough cries of the soldiers already, guard towers leveling their machine-guns down at Doom and her while the men around the vehicles sprung into action, with some going from their rifles immediately while a few others when to secure what could only be additional weapons of heavier calibers or to man the turrets or their vehicles. "Doom," hissed Valeria, "what are you doing."

"Pawns of Vladimir," said Doom, his armor's vocal synthesizers boosting his voice to thunderclap, making Valeria wince in alarm that the sudden rise in volume, "I, Doom, the true sovereign of Latveria demand your surrender. Capitulate and be spared. Deny me, and face your reckoning."

For a brief moment, the guards looked at each other, trying to process the words that the metal creature roared at them. They came to a unanimous reply. The roar of fire from their machine-guns, turrets, and rifles came fast and relentless. Valeria flinched, closing her eyes with each crack and snap of gunfire, wincing in anticipation of wounds that never came. She peeked open through a single eye. Beside her stood Doom, arms folded with both shoulders slumped in boredom as if he had been through this routine far too many times to care by now. Before them, bullets clatter against a simmering forcefield or kine-shield of some kind, rolling off the defensive ward as if raindrops against a steel umbrella. A few stray grenades accompanied the bullets, popping uselessly against the barrier like firecrackers.

Unable to help herself, Valeria snickered briefly before tittering loudly. She was untouchable. By bullets. By explosions. By no other but Doom's will. She looked upon him as he extended a single arm, taking aim at the now terrified soldiers, barrels melted from sustained fire, ammo spent to no effect.

A miniature sun began to bubble into existence at the tip of his index finger, warmth practically radiating off the point as the forcefield fell. Then, like a stream of dawn, a lance of energy carved through the vehicles and towers in a swath of destruction the likes of which Valeria could have never fathomed.

How do does one describe the feeling of witnessing a force of nature fall upon your most hated enemies? How would one feel when the man standing next to them compelled the powers of light and energy itself, devasting all matter in his path as he turned his horizon to ash and oblivion with a simple sweep of a finger?

The stream of light faded. The world before them was altered irrevocably. Pools of melted slag formed ponds in a path of glowing glass and obsidian carved into the earth before them. Where there were once guard towers, there were but burned bundles of sticks, smoking and aflame. The air reeked of ash and the smell of something cooking. In the distance, alarms blared loudly far too late to be a proper response the assault that had just unfolded. The path ahead, so unlike a mere minute ago, was open to them without question.

Well, almost.

From beyond the smoke and ash before them came the choking gasps of a soldier lost to the darkness. His skin was covered in the darkness of soot and dotted by the whiteness of ash, likely from his former comrades. He collapsed before them, sucking in as much air as he could as he wheezed in agony. His left leftarm was a crisp that barely hung on by the remaining fabric still connected to his shoulder. It looked as if his belt bucket and parts of his helmet had been fused into hives of raw boiling pustules were there once was skin. It was at this moment that Valeria realized what that something cooking was. Flesh.

It was the smell of flesh.

Doom stood over the man who held his working arm up, his eyes weeping from fear and irritation, his mouth an incoherent babble for mercy and his mother. It struck Valeria how young he was, obvious even through the burns on his face. He couldn't have been much older than she was.

"Please...please," begged the boy, voice a hoarse whisper. "I don't want to die. Please don't let me die. I'll stop being a soldier. I'll stop. I want to go home. I need to go home and take care of my mother. She's sick! I can't leave her alone! Please don't let me die!"

It was a pathetic sight. To believe that this boy was among her oppressors, was one of those nameless and faceless guards few firing at her from just moments.

Doom looked down at the boy with a pensive expression. A child soldier. No divergence there from the methods of the original Baron Vladimir either. For all the changes were dealt with this new reality, it seemed that the Baron's character remained much the same, and the same people wound up paying for his sins every time. The boy was just another casualty of the human condition. Probably another child who lied about his age from some forsaken village to earn his keep with the Baron's army. Why wouldn't he? The pay was better than it would be, tilling land that would barely grow crops and then being forced to surrender those to the lord of the lands as well. No one wishes to suffer. Everyone wishes to live. As such, even if the choice is something that would disgust one down to their own moral core, oftentimes the only option would be to give in and swim with the tide.

With the Baron's guard, he could be free from the want of food and money, free from the free of being enslaved himself, and free from fear with the gun in his hands. Until now.

Now he was nothing again, just like his former comrades. Just like the prisoners within the gates.

He didn't deserve to die. Doom didn't owe him a life either. The price of war was necessary to be paid. "Valeria," said Doom, stepping over the grasping hands of the boy, "come. I have more to do."

"What about him?" she asked. This was absurd. Moment ago, she was in awe at the death that her benefactor had dealt. Now, she found herself pitying her enemy? Her oppressor? It couldn't be helped. For all that he was connected to, for all the atrocities men and his outfit committed against her people the look in his eyes was still too human. Maybe she was just weak. Maybe she was foolish. She just couldn't help it.

 _"_ He is no-" Doom stopped, looking at his own reflection within Valeria's eyes, smoke rising behind him, shrouding him in a visage of darkness and steel.

 _"I always believed that you could be better than what you are."  
_  
There were those words again. Those cursed, damned words. Was it not enough that Richards had to torment him with this new reality that perverted every memory he had of his home? Now must he strike his will as well? To bend Doom into a figure more towards his liking? To make Doom kneel?

But then there was the expression on her face, that encroaching sorrow at the tragedy of life that would not be denied. And neither would she.

Damn. Damn her. Damn Richards. Damn himself for succumbing to this.

Spinning around, sorcery flared along Doom's arms as he muttered the words hastily for his spell of healing. The boy was yet breathing, which meant that his personal energies could be manipulated. Bringing both arms down as patterns of magic coalesced around the boy's body, marking him with viridescence as cells began to multiply and alter. His screams broke came without any delay as his bones snapped and fused back together while his sinews snaked and undulated, looking for partner strands to reconnect to. Before their very eyes, the pustules popped and the melted burning metals were pushed out. A miracle in motion.

Wordless, Valeria looked at Doom and fixed him with an inquisitive, small smile. "You weren't kidding when you said you weren't a demon, were you?"

"Come," said Doom, his voice betraying none of the ineffable discomforts that rose from within him.

He had bent to the will of another.

Richards or the girl's.

But the choice was not entirely of his own.


	4. Prodigal Son 1-4

_1.4_

The fires burned long after the battle stopped, crackling on in mockery at the broken will of the soldiers, those who survived, fleeing like ashes carried by the winds, those who fell, dying under a blanket of smoke. Their guns were scattered across the ground, free for the taking for any, freed by the havoc that came through the camp like a storm of wrath and fire. The convoys were little more than crumbled balls of steel and sputtering engines. Gates and walls were ripped asunder, uprooted like turnips, strew across the camp where the walls between cells and freedom came crumbling down with every step taken towards the square.

Drawn and terrified the potential of freedom being but a lie, the prisoners emerged like feeble vermin, men, and women warped by torment into believing that they were so much less than what they could have been. Heads popped out, followed by dirty faces gaunt and thin, with eyes sunken, hollow, and blinking at the blinding light.

"Why aren't they coming out?" asked Valeria. "You freed them."

An acceptable question for one that only learned of the lash of tyranny but never held the whip. "Hope, girl, is a sweet nectar is miscible with the poison of deception. Though the light shines through to them, they have accepted their lot and their suffering. In the dark they must forge their courage anew, facing the beast of despair that has long since been overfed."

" _Beast of despair that has long since been overfed?"_ Valeria said, incredulously. "Seriously?"

He shot her a quick glare that demanded clarification.

"I understand what you're saying, it's just...you sound like a pulp novel trying to be deep. There. I said it."

"Doom does not _try_ to be deep, foolish girl," said Doom, fighting his rising ire. "Doom is. And it is your own fault that you are unable to appreciate linguistic mastery."

"Just say that they are afraid, Doom," said Valeria. "Three words. They. Are. Scared. For emphasis, you can add a very."

"None may decide the diction of Doom," said Doom, deathly serious.

Valeria rolled her eyes. "Whatever. Let's just get to the center of the camp and find Grandpa Boris and the rest of my clan."

Not long after they passed by, the prisoners emerged from their cocoons of darkness, metamorphized from vermin to moths as they now followed the two that walked freely in what looked to be the aftermath of an eldritch storm, scarring the earth and air indelibly. They began, at a distance, their hearts heeding the tale of Icarus and the sun. Before long, the allure grew too much to bear. A few children ran ahead of their parents first, crying out from them as they gave in to their impulses to get a closer glance at the girl and her golem-or whatever the steel creature was. As they ran back, bearing proof of their safety, the rest were emboldened, gaining ground and growing with curiosity at the ones that had freed them.

"They're following us," said Valeria, gladdened that it did not take long for the people to, how did he put it, "forge their courage anew." "We're getting quite a following."

"They are following me," corrected Doom. "Exactly as intended."

"Fine," said Valeria, "but what do you plan to do with them?"

"Have them bear witness."

"To what? You sound like you're trying to start a religion."

She wasn't too far off.

On the way to the square, the trail behind them had thickened three times over with people. Where once wide roads of dirt and mud could allow for three convoys of transports in without much issue, now there was no room left behind them. Good. The more the better. It would make the myth that he was to build all the grander, all the quicker.

By the time they had reached the square, it was less of an execution ground and more of a last stand.

A row of soldiers holding back the Zefiro Clan, raging but hesitant against the guns pointed at them. Lined against a side of the concrete slab that gave the square its name, Boris chuckled underneath his breath as he watched the gathering mob approach, his granddaughter and what he could only assume to be the hired help she found. "Captain," said Boris, face half bandaged and barely standing. "Hey. Captain. Look over there."

The portly man turned to see what his prisoner was hinting at. " _No. No!"_

 _"_ Grandpa," said Valeria, surprise rising above her rage at what had been done to her kin. "Huh. Expected worse, actually."

That wasn't the respond Doom anticipated.

Valeria shrugged. "I've seen him come home from bars in worse states."

Boris the Barfighter. Made sense, since this version of him was determined to be as different as possible for whatever reason.

Past the Zefiro Clan, Doom emerged noting each and every face that he passed by. They were of passing resemblance to members of his original clan, yet not similar enough to be copies or alternatives. Rather than being siblings, these individuals were more akin to cousins. An involuntary tinge of loneliness died inside Doom. He left his clan a long time ago. Yet, there was always the history, always the memory. Now there wasn't even that. Just someone else that looks like someone else he once knew. They could wait. There were other things that needed to be dealt with at the moment.

"Return to your cells," Sweat poured down the portly Captain's face, staining the collar of his uniform from black to purple as he fought to keep his composure before Doom. "Return to your cells and you will not be charged as rebels to the Barony, and as such executed. It is not too late."

Fool. He fit perfectly with the Vladimir regime. Weak of body and mind, a slave to fear and a slaver of fear. His was the kind to cite Machiavelli despite never reading any of the man's work. Doom knew better than they, by the distance a galaxy and further beyond. What controlled people, what compelled them to act, to submit, to rebel was all based around a single principle.

Hope.

It is from this single seed that everything springs forth. With the power of hope, a leader can convince all those beneath him to commit to any act that would be considered unfathomable. For the hope of the future, men, women, children will all bear arms and walk into the jaws of hell and in the fear of losing this hope, in losing more than what they can bear, they obey. Fear is nothing but the diminishment of hope, the stripping away of the good from the present or the future. Love, inversely, is but the maintenance and development of all that is believed to be good.

A true sovereign would not concern himself whether it is better to be feared or loved; both were easily interchangeable at the behest of the ruler that stood above the people as their paragon.

Which was why his soldiers were going to bend to Doom, instead.

Turning ever so slightly so that those gathered behind him might only be able to see the side of his mask, Doom spoke, his vocal synthesizer activating for effect. "For any and all who wish to continue suffering the indignities of an impudent tyrant's wretched cruelty, take heed of the fool's words." No one moved. Good. This was to be easier than he expected. As Doom pointed a single finger at the soldiers gathered before, the children dressed in uniform flinched in chilled horror at what was to come. "And for any and all who wish to continue being nothing more than slaves to the same impudent tyrant, stand your ground before Doom as your comrades did, with the bravery and conviction comparable to hounds. Perhaps if you breathe deeply enough, you might even be able to taste some of their courage still."

One of the benefits of technology over magic was specificity and ease. There were spells and cantrips that could achieve almost anything desired for the caster but the more specific the detail, the more intricate the pattern of sorcery had to be. For example, should one want to cripple the psychological stability of a group of soldiers it would be far easier for one's armor to gather a thick cloud of ash in an invisible force-field to release into their proximity rather than trying to comprehend the universal powers that were needed to compose the pattern of the spell to telekinetically gather a nondescript amount of ash.

Coughing and choking as they breathed ash clouds that were men but moments ago, the guards began to break. One soldier on the far left threw down his rifle and ran, screaming for forgiveness as he turned a corner and all but disappeared. The remainder tried to hold, but as they looked upon the face of Doom, at the viridescent fires that lit the hollows of his mask's eye slits, _hope_ abandoned them. One by one, their weapons fell from their hands. The Captain howled for them to halt and obey, his voice growing shrill with a fury that betrayed his composure. Perfect. Doom didn't even need to look behind himself as he felt the freed people of Latveria begin to stir in voice and spirit. At first, only a few brave mocked his powerlessness in jeers and laughter, making light of the man that they once lived beneath in abject terror. Like dominoes, where one spoke, someone besides them joined in, voices multiplying, growing stronger, roaring curses and demanding violence for what was done to them.

"Silence," said the Captain, waving his gun at the crowd to no avail. " _Silence! You wretched creatures!"_

It didn't matter now. There was no dreaded Captain of the camp anymore. The mystique of his control was shattered. Now, he was just a fat, balding man in a sweat-soaked uniform that couldn't even direct his own men.

"Kill them!" cried out a voice from behind Doom. Several more cries joined in with equal fervor as the soldiers

Doom lifted a single hand and all fell silent. "You, soldiers of the Tyrant Vladimir, have committed crimes against Latveria and her people. Crimes that the people demand they be compensated for. How to plead you for the crimes of theft: from the mouths' of the people; murder: on the whims of a feeble tyrant; rape: of this land's future and the weak and defenseless; and treason: for spilling the blood for your families and neighbors?"

A crush anvil descended upon the guards as the pressure of a thousand eyes descended upon them. Stepping forward, a single soldier tore off his uniform and cast it into the mud. "Guilty, my lord," he spoke, voice quivering as a few errant tears escaped. "Guilty on all accounts and one more. Deception."

"Of what kind?" asked Doom, already knowing the answer.

The stripped soldier swallowed. "Deception of the self, for believing that I served the people. Deception of my family, for claiming that what I did was to keep them safe. Deception of..." The boy could not finish. He crumbled to his knees, a wreckage of a man, sobbing before all to see. Unable to bear the sight, his comrades stepped forth to stand beside.

"What are you doing?" breathed the Captain in disbelief.

"I am guilty," said a soldier, tearing his uniforming into tatters.

"I as well," said another, half-way unbuttoned while trying to help his sobbing comrade back to his feet.

"Guilty."

"I'm no better."

Their admissions grew to a chorus, shame growing more and more pronounced with each capitulation, each discarded uniform. Doom approached them, looming over them as a guillotine would hang above the heads of those deemed guilty.

"Children of Latveria," said Doom, finally turning to address his people, enraptured by his power, enthralled by his voice, " I, too, am a son of Latveria like many of you, long exiled, now returned. Now returned to see my people in shackles, my homeland defiled, my dreams of our future aborted to feed the greed of a few violators who hold no love for our land beyond feeding their pockets, stomaches, and loins to their hedonistic content." Doom paused, waiting for his people to finish echoing their agreement.

"Look upon these men." Doom flourished to the soldiers beside him. "Look upon their fear, their foolishness, and their shame. But deny them not their youth, their courage, their admissions. Though slaves to the regime once, their uniforms are now left upon the ground as effigies of shame. And though we do not forget nor absolve them all that they have committed, we must remember the face of our true enemy." Spinning sharply, Doom presented the shaking Captain, still standing at the front of the square, gun shaking in his hand, eyes darting around, scanning for any that would dare make a move no him. "Those that have ordered the crimes against our people using the misguided among our youths to do so, those that still wear the costume of the tyrant's dogs in pride, those that barter with us using lives that are not theirs to own."

A frenzied snarl rose through the people. The Captain waved his gun from side to side, trying to ward off the rapacious looks for vengeance that were directed towards him. "S-stay back!"

"Take him," said Doom to the soldiers before him, "and free the prisoners. That will be your first step in absolution. Present him to Doom and assist in the punishment. Do such and you begin to pay back your fee of penance."

The soldiers needed no further incentive. Breaking into action as a group, they descended upon the Captain, his gun firing wildly into the air as they seized him.

"Traitors!" screamed the Captain. "I'll have your heads for this! I'll have your heads! Let me go!"

They obliged. Splashing into the mud just below Doom

"You've found your proper place at last," said Doom.

Whatever words of insult, whatever threats died as the Captain wilted before Doom's visage. "Please-I have a son! A daughter!"

"So did many that you have tortured," said Doom.

"No, wait! You need me!" said the Captain, pushing himself to his feet. "You need me! I can-urk!"

Metal fingers digging into a soft, pudgy neck with one hand, Doom activated his mask's holographic recorder to document just how quickly an officer of the Baron's army could turn purple. "Yes. You are quite right. You are of use to Doom."

The metal fingers closed. The Captain's head snapped backward at an angle, hanging loosely by the skin of his neck rather than bone. His eyes filled with blood as he flopped to the ground, body twitching as he let himself go one final time. Filming his final, most pathetic moments Doom ended his recording. "Spread the news," said Doom, putting the disk back into its hidden compartment. "Tell others of what happened here this day. Go back to your homes and let them know that Victor Von Doom brings death to tyrants."

Without any further words, Doom turned to leave, not bothering to bask in the shockwave of cheers that erupted from the people at the death of the Captain. From what he could hear, they were clearly moving his body away, likely planning to defile it in some manner. It mattered little by this point. The desired effect had been achieved.

He found Valeria, surrounded by fellow members of her clan as she attended her grandfather. Swollen eye, broken nose, bruised jaw, multiple lacerations, and probably a concussion. That was the story this man's face told. What he said was: "Bring some vodka. We drink to freedom!"

"Grandpa,' said Valeria. "Come on. You just got done getting hit in the liver and now you want to do it again?"

" _Da?_ What better time to attack that after the opponent is weak?"

"You liver is not-nevermind."

As Doom approached, several of the clan turned to face him, silenced by his approach, in awe of his presence. Except for Boris.

"You are man I should thank for keeping my little witch alive, then," said Boris, extending a hand toward Doom.

Doom looked down at Boris's hand as one would a tumor.

"No," said Valeria, slapping her grandfather's hand aside while fixing Doom with a quick glare. "You don't want to do that." She held up a hand, one finger still very swollen. "Trust me, I know."


	5. Prodigal Son 1-5

_1.5  
_

Across the liberated prison, festivities raged as melodies of the once disparate clans rose into the air as a cacophonous symphony. Though separated by custom and creed, they were shackled and united by their bondage, now broken by will of a single man. They had torn down the gates that parted them from freedom and joined in celebration through grand tents linked to former prison cells, now places for food and shelter. It had been decided that should when the time came to make a stand, they would do so together in this place of plenty, that they had taken back from their oppressors than as individual groups of nomadic clans, facing the capricious nature of the forest and earth while being hunted.

Of course, they now had a leader worth following, something far more the mere men that lead them in times past. The elders and wise women among them spoke of Doom in hushed whispers, claiming that he was a demon, that the girl that brought him was a witch that had signed their souls away. Their words were lost to the wind. Too many among them had already suffered far too much at the hands of the Baron to care if their souls were damned. Even for those that believed in such things as demons, there was a cruel desire to see the powers of hell turned upon the Baron at whatever the cost. Those few and astute then also pointed out that they were in no position to bargain with Doom anyway and the fact that he hadn't cosigned them into slavery was enough to merit him as a saint in this broken lands.

That last assertion spawned a chorus of agreements and everyone went back to their celebrations.

Far from the rest of the crowd, a barracks sat alone in the dark by decree of Doom, light flashing from inside, the entrances shielded by metallic sliding doors with electronic eyes.

His ruined helmet sat, discarded atop a pile of books condemned to the status of a temporary nightstand for their subpar information. Their pages were filled with histories; family trees, events of note, family recipes, and even a few journals dating from 1856 till the _present year_ of 1978. It appeared that Doom had not fallen horizontally across universes but vertically as well. He devoured pages, words blurring by under his inscrutable gaze capturing details between the seconds. It was when the final book fell from his hands that he found himself faced with a gnawing truth that set into him like the beginning of an endless winter.

He didn't exist here. Not as himself at the very least.

The tomes he read brought tidings that sickened him to his stomach. His would-be father, Werner had died here, struck down by pneumonia before his tenth year. His existence was marked by an unmarked grave in the woods somewhere, the best that the clan could offer in times of plague and ruin. His mother, on the other hand, was fated to suffer deeper, whatever the universe, whatever her life. She, like too many others of his clan, existed in semblance to their pasts selfs, carrying qualities that aligned to his memory. No longer was she Cynthia Von Doom. Now she was Cynthia Werber, the adopted daughter of a woodsman who found her one day laying asleep beneath a tree, bathed in blood from what could only be assumed to be her mother's.

She grew up to be a brilliant woman that hid a cutting perspicacity beneath her guise of innocence and beauty. Yet, she denied herself marriage, spurning suitors both peasant and nobleman alike, riling her father to no end. By this point, the records had veered into guesswork, with multiple accounts contradicting each other on her disappearance and eventual return to Latveria. Some say she left, feeling a call to the far east, seeking enlightenment to face the lifetime of nightmares that haunted her and sieged the borders of her mind by nightfall. Others claimed that she ran off with a foreign duke of some sort before breaking their engagement and leaving a spree of broken hearts across Europe. Regardless of the assumptions, the accountings converged on her return to Lateveria. They all espoused the same point, that the radiant young flower that once treated the ill a smile and a few words of wit had wilted. The woman that inhabited her skin was heavily pregnant, her dark locks taking on strands of white, her eyes a shifting kaleidoscope of colors and shapes, with some claiming to see a terrible fire that was growing all too visible within her.

She gave birth to a child on a storm-damned, rain-sodden night. Through the screams of her labor, it was claimed that the forest around them began to rot and die before their eyes, that the beasts of the woods were sent scouring in abject terror towards the four horizons. Fires broke out from dead trees. Lightning lashed the earth, wiping the land below in savage fury, scarring the land to this day. By nights end, the clan had emerged from tents and dwellings to a world unmade by a nightmare, the woods cradling their camp in a cocoon of dead, ash-covered wood. Cynthia was gone, leaving only a trail of blood off past the only opening of the cradle, leading to a newborn babe sleeping peacefully on the edge of a basin, her head already thick with hair of fairest gold resting before an effigy of a wood shaped man with a cruel sneer painted in a coat of blood.

Mephisto? It matched the description of his physical form to say the least.

Some wished the infant to be abandoned, seeing her as an omen of ruin to come. Other, less superstitious minds fought against such madness. What harm could an infant bring to their people? If they were to kill her, would that not invoke the ire of the heavens instead. Eventually, it came to be that the girl was spared, but none could find it within themselves to raise a child of tragedy.

Except for one.

Boris Volkov was not a Zefiro by blood in this universe. Instead, he had married into the clan after they found him floating down a river, riddled with bullet wounds with life barely clenched between his fingertips. He adapted quickly, proving himself to be an adept hunter with his impressive marksmanship and as an irreplaceable intermediary trader with outsiders who would not sully themselves with the Romani thanks to his purely Russian background and easy-going nature. He married a woman named Viola, a butch, r and farmer who contrarily, was known for her terrible temper and habit breaking the noses of anyone that annoyed her. Theirs seemed to be a comfortable existence until she died suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage, judging from the description of her passing. The following accounting of the aftermath praised Boris for his stoicism in the face of tragedy, while a few described a notable increase in his alcohol consumption. Eventually, all but a few noted him little more than an extremely functional but violent drunk that enjoyed ending bar fights.

Which was why, in the less than impressive wisdom of the clan, they left the cursed child with the drunkard and called it a day. Shameful yet expected from the Zefiro people. They were the alternatives to the people that sought to exile him and his father for his mother's crimes after all.

A mother that, in this place, was still missing. Or dead.

A beep tore Doom from his ruminations. "Master _,"_ chirped a drone, its tensile arms twitching as it focused its single glowing optic to confirm Doom's biometrics. "Doomdrone-03 has retrieved the last amounts of silicon needed to complete the project. Awaiting confirmation to begin the installation."

"Proceed."

The swarm of drones pulled away from the center of the room, unveiling the grand nucleus that Doom was constructing, a towering totem betwixt sorcery and technology hummed with grumbling power, edging on the precipice of a meltdown. The drones returned to their slots along the walls, recharging themselves along the battery hives that lined the sides of the room. The insides of the barracks had been hollowed out to make room for his projects. Piles of scrap metal, plastic, and other miscellaneous ingredients were left in growing mounds so that the drones could draw from them to feed the forge for its production.

The matter forge was something that he developed long after his original revolution in Latveria, during which his weapons were still constructed mechanical means drones and basic bots at a pathetic pace. To contend with his growing number of foes that he was faced with, the Matter Forge allowed him to construct anything that he needed, provided that the forge had enough energy to do so and he had fed it enough mass to replicate every aspect of his product.

Without much his original resources, he had to _'dumb down'_ his design to avoid complications, supplanting technology with sorcery where there was a need. It stood at the center of the hollowed out building, rising three stories and half again as wide. It sembled a spire impaled through an oblong oven of rusted steel, circuits cooled by veins of liquid nitrogen converted from running water through a basic enchantment. In spite of this, the forge still glowed white hot between the cracks, its core pulsing beneath with angry solar heartbeats. Which was another thing that required modification. The fusion cell at the heart of the machine pulsed with rage due to the sorcerous enchantment that was required for the sake of stability. Wrapping the cell in a vacuum of tessellating patterns, the radiation would spin off into the void of the external dimensions as it fed its power to the machine directly. By this way, even if it were to overload, the destruction would be, in the worst case, mostly contained.

A simple computer was built into the back of the forge, created hastily through scavenged ham radios and harvested silicon. It was a simple system, nothing based on the intricacies of generating holograms projections or calculating the dimensions of a new device to its exact specifications but for now, it would do. Syncing his armor's system to the computer, Doom's gauntlet emitted a holographic menu that drew from the memory banks within his armor spare him time in needing to redesign his new materials.

His finger hovered over the menu, wondering where he should start. Doom gave a look at his old helmet, laying rent and cracked atop the pile of books. That was as good as a place to start as any. A new face. He submitted his request. The forge grumbled and obliged as drones began melting down the piles of material they had gathered into slag and began pouring it down tubes connecting to alchemical transmutators that led into the guts of the machine. The machine huffed and hummed, brightness shining through the cracks barely contained. Webs of resplendent light netted the room as it began to flicker. The towering machine roared as it opened, hot air hissing out in a blast of smoke, drifting out like a chimney from a steam-aged train. Drones retrieved the new helmet that was hovering weightlessly in the forge, their tensile limbs danced across his new mask, glistening chrome. They brought it to him as servants would heft a gift before their king. Taking it from them without haste, Doom examined the details of his forge's handiwork for places of fault.

He saw himself in the reflection of his new headpiece, expecting to see a creature of disfigurement, a monstrous visage mocking him, taunting him of his loss.

What faced him with the face of a man he hadn't seen in years.

The helmet fell out of his hands. A drone snatched it up before it could hit the ground, bring up right before his face as if it were a mirror.

With shivering fingers, Doom traced the face of the man staring back at him in the reflective metal of his new skull. He traced his face as saw the man in the mirror become him, bearing an expression occupying the borders of astonishment, humiliation, and fury. Across smooth skin and barest stubble, his fingers traveled across faded wounds, present nose, and dark brown eyes. Victor Von Doom had been made whole, put together piece by piece without fault except for one single fault.

That scar.

 _That single damned scar.  
_  
Reed Richards was mocking him now. He was sure of it. Why else would he return everything else to Doom? Why else would he make Doom whole save for the one scar that he was responsible for, the scar that he delivered to Doom? This was a display of power, of dominance. Anger swelled beneath Doom's breast like an ancient dragon roused from slumber. Hot molten hate shot through his veins as he watched the strangers eyes turn to twin viridescent crescents overflowing with sorcerous energy.

All this was a punishment, then? A purgatory all the same, where his people were slaves, his mother was gone, his father was dead, and left with a girl shared his origin but also the namesake, and partially in appearance, of both Valeria's that he knew. Was there a more blatantly obvious torment that Reed could inflict upon him. An entire existence that was constructed to mock his history and his faults. All for the sake of proving that he was better than Doom.

Better than Doom.

 _I always believed that you could be better than what you are_

The flow of fury dried and died. Brown eyes were all that remained. The dragon crumbled back into a broken slumber, unable to bear its own weight against the light of truth.

There was no reason for Richards to mock him further. Not with what he said, nor with how he was. Through all their years of endless conflict, Richards proved himself to lack that cruelty which Doom had believed him capable of . He was capable of hard choices and prone to making foolish assumptions based off his own conceit but never cruelty. Which meant that this wasn't a punishment so much as it was a lecture, a lesson. The wrath came back again, in the form of rivers of ice instead of fire forming hatred instead of rage. Richards thought himself-no, _proved_ himself better, and now he was going to teach Doom a lesson.

 _That was it then, wasn't it, Richards? Always lecturing me. Believing yourself to be so much better._

 _How am I to accept this? Is this even a reality that emerged at your hand? Why? Why this? What is the point?_

"You know, you don't look half-ugly," said Valeria, appearing by his side, admiring his mask all the same. "You should take the mask off more often. It'll convince people that you're not out to eat their souls."

"How did you-" Doom stopped mid-turn to slam the new helmet down his head, the vacuum seal clicking and accepting the connection as his HUD began to boot down in the right corner of his vision.

"Slipped in on one of your floating orbs when it went out to get some stuff for you," said Valeria, pointing a thumb at one of his errant Doomdrones. Without looking, Doom pointed a finger at the particular drone with blasted to pieces. "You're kind of a sore loser, aren't you?"

" _Leave_."

"Why?" asked Valeria. "It's boring out there. Everyone is just playing music, dancing, and drinking. Never was interested in playing a couple of strings on a piece of wood, or flapping my arms around so boys could ogle me, and I've had about enough of drinking with grandpa's habits. So. Came here to see how you were doing."

Damned girl. Could she not see that he was occupied? Didn't she know better than to transgress upon his will? "I am fine. Now leave. Before you find regret in your actions instead."

She pretended to consider it for a second. "Nah. Doubt it."

"You dare defy Doom," said Doom, ionic orb sparking into existence on the tip of his finger. "It would take less than a gesture to-"

"Go ahead," said Valeria, a smirk that fanned the ire within Doom plastered across her face. "I don't think you will."

"And why is that?"

"Becuase if you were that sort of person," she said, "you would have killed me in the woods and that'd been that. You see, Doom," she said, taunting him with each step as she drew closer, "I get why you have that mask: you're too easy to read."

"You understand no one, foolish girl-"

"You're way too honorable for one," said Valeria. "You decided to help me for less than nothing: example number one. Saving that defenseless soldier while I pretended to make puppy eyes at you: example number two. The third example was when you saved the soldiers earlier. Didn't need to. Plenty of the mob behind us would've torn the remaining soldiers limb from limb without prompting. Still, you saved them, by having them betray their captain in front of everyone. That was a neat trick by the way, very smooth."

"You deceived me? Doom asked, curiosity rising alongside the rage. Just how much of her was Valeria _Richards_ and how much of her was tied to the Valeria of his childhood?

She snorted with laughter. "Yeah. Felt bad for the poor guy but let's be fair here, he would have shot me without any hesitation. Don't mistake me, I'm glad you saved him. I just... wouldn't have been broken up if you didn't."

Doom faced her "What was the point, then?"

"Wanted to see if you could feel pity," she admitted.

For a few moments of terseness, they held their gaze. The glow from Doom's fingertip faded. "What else have you observed from my behavior?" he asked.

"Beyond the very obvious fact that you're egomaniacal, know how to work a crowd into a frenzy, wants to rule-and I mean _rule,_ not this amatuer hour stuff that the Baron is trying _-_ Latveria with the adoration of all its people?"

Ire began to give way to interest. "Fascinating. Was the _helpless girl_ demeanor all an act then. The tears. The cursing? The summoning?"

She blushed slightly. "That... was mostly frustration. And pressure. And hunger. Look, I've been on the run for a week, starved, looking around for a random assortment of items to perform a ritual in a book from a mother that I never met. So, yeah, a bit of a rough week you caught me on. And I'm not helpless. Never helpless. I achieved my goals, didn't I."

That nearly laugh out of him. "I freed your people. And all the other trials for that matter."

"I summoned you."

"Accidentally."

"Still counts. Doubt you were anywhere you wanted to be considering how fast you signed on with me"

She wasn't wrong. "Very well," grumbled Doom, voice low.

"What," said Valeria, holding a hand next to her ear. "Couldn't hear you. Come again."

"Don't be a pest, girl," said Doom. "You may stay. But if you disrupt my work-"

" _I'll grind your limbs down to the very atoms curse you to suffer in a vacuous realm for all eternity with no hope for return,"_ Valeria declared, clenching a single fist. " _Then I shall brag to your family, friends, and your goldfish as well for my ego is insatiable."  
_  
"Do not mock me, girl."

Valeria folded her arms. "I'm not. That's just the way you are."

 _Teleport her outside with a spell,_ screamed the inner confines of Doom's mind. _Trap her in temporary stasis using a gravity-field. She mocks you for who you are. A creature of Richard's machinations, she has to be. Do not bend to her.  
_  
Yet, where that voice once would hold sway of his mind, it was not but a screaming passenger as Doom found himself a stranger in a strange land, lost in his own mind about who he was to himself. Perhaps Doom's of eras old would have just cast her aside without a stray thought, but now, after all the events that have transpired, Doomworld and the Incursions, perhaps he needed to change. Perhaps he start again.

Better this time, if he could.

"So," said Valeria, goggling at the matter forge. "This is something that you put things into so that it can change them into other things?"

"Very good," said Doom. "You have demonstrated deductive reasoning above the level of an illiterate peasant."

She shot him a dirty look. "I could have also described it as an amalgamative techno-sorcery forge capable of atom-scale matter transmutation that requires but the object's equivalence in mass to attain full functionality, but that would have been a mouthful and someone else would accuse me of casting spells because they couldn't understand what I was saying."

That sounded about right. "Indeed."

"Have you made anything other than that helmet with it?"

"No," said Doom, activating the holographic menu again.

Valeria pursed her lips into a thin line. "Want suggestions?"

"No," said Doom. He flicked through thousands of files before he finally found the one that he needed. He didn't have the resources for a high-powered variant so he would have to make due with the basics.

"What is-" her eyes narrowed as she saw the title of the project. _Doombot._ Her jaw dropped and Doom could see the beginnings of a smile start at her eyes. " _No fucking way."  
_  
"What?" said Doom, confused by her growing bemusement.

"You-you-you-" she wheezed and began cackling with laughter. She covered her face as her chest heaved with laughs that couldn't be held back. "I-I'm sorry," she said, wiping away her tears. "I knew you were an egomaniac, but this firmly puts you in the territory of megalomania. _Doombot?_ Seriously? You named the robot after yourself. You can't do that!"

"Why not," said Doom. "I was the creator. It is a name worthy of fear."

"They sound like one of those America cartoons that Boris makes me intercept for him sometimes," she said. "Do they have a kung-fu grip as well?"

No response came from him beyond a silent glare.

"Okay," she said, holding up her hands. "Sorry. Sorry. But still, you got to admit, the name needs more... punch."

Did this girl think that she had something better? "A suggestion now, then, if you are so versed in the art of naming."

She leaned in close, conspiratorially. "This is a basic model right?"

"Indeed," said Doom.

"How does the name, _Kirk_ sound to you," she said, grin barely kept from her face. " _Kirk,_ of the Enterprise series? Eh? Eh?"

"No." The word came out like a gavel. "Absolutely not. You-how much American television do you watch? How?"

"Sorcery," she said, nonchalantly. "There's a spell that I know that lets me see and sort of 'pull' on signals. I typically need to be holding an antenna to work though."

Did she create a sorcerous spell of her own? Instinctually enhanced her abilities using a focus? This was it then. Considerable sorcerous talent garnered not for the sake of mastering the forces around her, invoking the dimensions beyond, or drawing from the spirit with. Instead, it is directed to pirate episodes of Star Trek directly from the source. _Star Trek The Original Series._ Doom felt a need to express some form of dissapointment but he found his well of words running dry. There really wasn't much to say.

He could fault her tastes in her media consumption either.

"Perhaps," said Doom, words coming slowly. "No. I will not allow Kirk." Her face fell, a flat expression taking over. "But if I were to add a plasma-generated blade into the arm," he continued. "I think _Sulu_ would be more fitting."

Valeria's eyes widened. "Can you do that?"

Beneath the helmet, a ghost of a smile graced his expression. "Indubitably _."_

...

The drones retrieved the many parts from the massive forge and laid them out. Hundreds of components littered the ground before them as the machines adjusting their tensile limbs for precision.

"That's pretty handy," said Valeria. "Having the flying bots do all that for you. Shit, with what you have you can replace the entire Latverian manufacturing industry in a week, maybe even put the Americans to shame within a year."

Doom scoffed. "I would put the Americans to shame by tomorrow if I so desired."

"Why don't you, then?" asked Valeria. "I mean, I don't doubt you could, considering what you've done just today."

The limbs came together first, fibrous carbon tubes meant to resemble human muscles snapping together as layers of titanium plate were welded onto it. At the points of the shoulder, a magnetic edge sparked with energy while the drones worked to calibrate the concussion blaster in one hand while attaching a diamond-shaped plasma-generator to the other. The legs came together much the same, with magnetically tumbling balls as joints while the drones inspected the ports on the feet for thruster integrity.

"Because that would defeat the purpose."

"What purpose."

A white-hot blade of simmering light extended from the plasma generator with a hum. "The purpose of a revolution, my child. Do you understand why I am creating this machine?"

"As a vanguard?" she asked. "I know if you can free and inspire people you'll have the numbers, but the arms are still controlled by the Baron. So you need expendable soldiers."

"That would be accurate with any worthwhile adversary but no," said Doom. "If I so choose, I could kill the Baron tonight with my bare hands."

"Once again," said Valeria, "why not?"

The front of the torso came first, the spinal mount a thick layer of titanium coating a micro-fusion cell that powered all action. Chrome pauldrons were seared together at the shoulders of the chest plate, arms and legs clanging together as they magnetized to the center. As the drones went over the back end for any leaks or cracks, the back of the Doombot was lowered onto the exposed insides of the machine, fire sealing it shut for good one last time. "The people," said Doom. "They need to view the victory as theirs, themselves as essential partners rather than serfs fighting another tyrant's war for domination. Hence, the need for it to be a true revolution. The machines I create will keep them safe from the brunt of the military might but they must be in the field, fighting alongside each other, behind me against the tyranny of the Baron's forces."

"But... more people will die," said Valeria.

"Yes," agreed Doom. "That they will. But through their bloodshed, through the sacrifice of multiple groups and clans, the tribes and peoples coming together for a single cause, I wash away the rot that has stymied the soul of Latveria for so long. Racism is but a mythology, Valeria. As is prejudice. Through the reign of Doom, I will unmake the legends of the feeble men that came before me and pen a tale of a single people. Not that of clashing clans, divided classes, and cowards for leaders. No. Beneath Doom, there will be one Latveria, decided by the benevolence of my rule, accepted by the people."

"I think I understand," said Valeria as she watched a drone crown the Doombot with its head, a cross-shaped glow that matched the red fusion core within it, look as if it were the helm of a mechanical knight. "It still seems so... underhanded though, using lives to build ideals."

"There is a duality of morality between the man and the ruler, girl," said Doom. "In society, laws are made to prevent the individual from enacting violence. Yet, the world and existence itself I daresay are anarchies without common powers. So it falls to men such as I to construct them."

"Cool," said Valeria, completely distracted by this point.

Doom found himself with more to say but stopped. "You'll understand in due time."

"Can I touch it?" asked Valeria, looking at the glistening champion of chrome, newborn from the forge, standing at over 230 centimeters, head glowing flaming red.

"You can do more than that," said Doom. A drone brought a visor over to Valeria.

"What's this?" asked Valeria, pulling the visor over her head.

"It is for you to judge the Doombo-the _Sulu's_ effectiveness," said Doom. Pressing a holographic icon on his gauntlet, he linked her to the Doombot.

"Whoa," said Valeria, leaning back as she saw herself through the machine's eyes. "So weird."

A Doombot's visual range spanned across a 270-degree field of vision with parabolic audio sensors that could detect vibrations from miles away. Considering the time constraints and limited resources expended on the venture, _Sulu_ was still technically a rush job. It was missing a few standard armaments that would be included in a normal Doombot's arsenal. Most essentially, the active forcefield would not be in play due to the energy drain that of the plasma-cutter combined with the thrusters installed. This would be a foolish trade if Doom wasn't proving his mastery of machines to the girl beside him. Additionally, the machine's artificial intelligence was removed for expediency. The programming typically required some work the base materials had been produced as well.

Instead, the Doombot was running on a user-interface, currently linked to Valeria. The HUD booted to its full capacity, analyzing the room before it as it identified sources of energy, mapped the general terrain through sonar pulses, and switched between infrared view and standard a few times before the system went green. _All systems optimal,_ it greeted Valeria, drawing a smile from her as it scanned her, detecting her heartbeat and noting her physical dimensions.

"Test it," said Doom.

"How?" asked Valeria.

"Think about something."

With that suggestion, _Sulu_ did a backflip. Laughter pouring out from Valeria as she felt the uncanny sensation of watching the world through the Doombot's eye. It landed, tucked into a metal ball as it rolled across the ground, spinning up a wall before flipping off of it to land back on its feet. Igniting its plasma-cutter, Valeria directed it to swing its blade at thin air, watching the trails of light left behind by the plasma. In one smooth arc, it split a nearby table in half at the speed of her thought.

It was at this point that she finally let out another breath. "So... this thing can fly too, right?"

"Find out," said Doom.

...

A shadow reigned over Hassenstadt, stretching far past the lamp-lit cobblestone streets devoid of people. The curfew was in place, with only the brave and the starving daring to break the will of law. Fleet feet of urchins scampered between places of darkness, evading patrols as they scoured in search of food and prey to sustain themselves for another day. The exterior of the city was a hollowed visage of a faded glory, the once handsome gothic design of the houses giving way to rot and ruin. Cracks spread from streets to builds as children and insects scampered through with ease. The men of the uniform would not patrol out this far. There was no property of the crown worth defend the outer edges of the city, where old church rested right beyond the main gates of the city, dilapidated, abandoned, stone gargoyles now but vague molds eroded by time and rain.

The city was divided by a canal but three steps past the bazaar, resting at the foot of a grand colossal structure that drank empty the lives of those who were enslaved to build it.

Castle Hassenstadt. A vast creature of nine keeps crowning a base of obsidian and stone, iron gates dividing classes of nobility and the common, separating those who courted the Baron's favor and lapped at his heels against those that were subject to his worst desires.

At the heart of the castle, the throne room sat, velvet curtains hiding painted glass, marble floors glittering with paintings of gold, bearing odes to the Baron's history and glory. At each end of the room, armed guards stood on watch at all times, hawk-like eyes locked on the terrified messenger that knelt below the dais of glass and ivory that lifted the Baron's glistening throne.

"How," said the Baron, his dark eyes boring down at the feeble worm beneath him. He had been broken from his slumber by emergency born of incompetence.

"We don't know, si-"

A single gunshot rang out. The messenger's body slumped over, blood spilling against the limpid hue of the bottom step of the dais. Baron Vladimir Fortuov adjusted his silken robes of blue as he summoned a guard, handing off his smoking gun as he watched the messenger gurgle his last, eyes open in shock and terror, till the light left him.

To say that the Baron abhorred bad news was to claim that that swallowing a stick of dynamite might give one more than mere indigestion. Falling back upon his grand throne, the Baron sagged in his seat and simmered with rage. "Open the curtains," said the Baron. "I desire to see my country. And get rid of this mess." They obliged him as the velvet skin that shielded the outside was cast aside while other servants dragged the dead messenger away with practiced haste, cleaner with a mop chasing them as they left the room. He cast his gaze far and long into the forlorn darkness beyond. Somewhere out there, far past the point that he could see, some _bastard animal_ had grown the nerve to defy him.

They tell him that Excavation Site Gamma had been liberated. The tales that the messenger carried was like that of a superstitious gypsy, babbling things about death and fire. A tale about a creature-no, they dared call him a liberator-known as Doom. Worse yet, for every man that was interrogated, be they soldier or prisoner, the stories were aligned. Which meant that the incoherent mumblings were at the very least founded in reality and that there was some fool who decided to dub himself Doom out there in the muck inciting the rage of revolt into the peasants.

With a furious snarl, a glass shattered against the ground, splashing red wine everywhere. Someone came by and cleaned that too without so much as looking in his direction.

His largest mining operation had been halted. Which meant that, almost certainly, he wasn't going to meet this month's export requirement for the crystals unless this situation was resolved immediately.

Shooting up from his throne, the Baron began to pace as he fumed and pondered his next steps. No rebellion had ever lasted long against him for good reason. The chances of success when he was the one who held all the arms, who controlled all the goods, who deemed what was law itself made him the sole icon of power in the region. No one could arm themselves without his decree. No group would dare claim an inch of land without his acceptance. The only ones who ever tried to revolt, accordingly, are those degenerate tribes and clans that live in motion, scuttering like rats across his kingdom.

No matter. He would break them. Just as he had done time and time before. This _Doom_ was to be broken before these people that professed him to be a savior. They would witness his folly and fading weakness, along with his families' for their sin of his conception, and then and only then would they begin earning his forgiveness back through their exchange of labor in his mines. This would be done within the month, before any other of his accursed competitors could take advantage of his weakness and rip his position of power away from him.

He would handle this before the others had any time to notice.

"Bring me General Karadick," said Baron Vladimir without even bothering address his servants directly. It mattered not that it was midnight. It mattered not that he didn't say who should do it. The only thing that mattered was the fact that he was Baron and that they needed to obey. "Tell him to bring his special team of mutants and freaks along with him. I foresee that we will have need of their deformities before this is over. Now leave me. Go!" His servants fled the room like rats before a broom, soldiers showing themselves out with practiced discipline. A longed-for quiet fell upon the room as the Baron huffed out a hot breath, feeling the weariness of his age come upon him.

He had held Latveria for the entirety of his life, as had his father before him. This would not be a problem that he would remember. This would be but a blot in his memory. A stain on his mind. He held the support of the Americans, allowing them to establish the intelligence outposts and safehouses here as a checkpoint against Russia. He held the fear of his neighbors, worried of the sway he held over his superpower benefactors in their struggle against the Warshaw Pact. Most of all, he held membership in the single most powerful entity in the world, holding the power to change history to their whim. And he had exactly what they wanted within the confines of his nation.

The crystals that warped man into beast.

From within the inner pocket of his robes, he produced a micro-communicator meant for him and him alone.

" _Vocal authentication required."  
_  
He waited for the beep. "Hail Hydra."

" _Accepted."_

...

 _A/N: What. You think they were just having a giant prison camps site for ores and stuff. This is the MCU. Everyone is a Hydra rat. Hold on to your hats because prologue is coming to a close as the revolution begins. From there on out, characters of canon face the fallout of a post-Doom Latveria._


	6. Prodigal Son 1-6

_1.6_

Bursting through the clouds as mist enwreathed her like a cloak of shadows, a glowing green scar emitted an evanescent line in the foreground of midnight littered with stars as Valeria took flight for the first time in her life.

With her mind linked to the Doombot that she had dubbed _Sulu,_ a girl who was deemed barely more than a feckless orphan by townsfolk and guards alike became the first Latveria of this universe to ever rise into the stratosphere. Air whistled across her ears as if the stars themselves were playing an ode to her ascension. Wind rippled against her body, mind simulating the feeling of gale-force winds meeting her head-on as _Sulu's_ heart grew ever brighter and its thrusters, ever hotter. She danced free and soared higher than she would have ever dared to dream, like a beast from something out of a fantasy, like a leaf on the wind.

A whoop of joy came from Valeria as she pumped her fists, Doombot emulating the action despite the miles between them. Her jubilation was palpable through her laughter and her smile. A knot twisted and tightened within Doom's stomach.

She sounded far too much like _her_ when she laughed. The Valeria of his youth. Yet her appearance bent toward that of Valeria Richards.

Her existence was more than a mere cosmic echo. That, he was certain of. There were just too many patterns that followed in some form of consistency.

"Yes!" said Valeria, weaving glimmering rings from the clouds behind her, voluminous hues flashing through the vaporous mists translucently concealing the glowing emission of her fusion thrusters.

Hours had passed since her ascent and she was still lost amid the stars. If nothing else, that gave him time to complete a few more operations without her inane questions distracting him every few seconds. He had already forged a few sets of scouting drones and sent them scouring across the land. There was a need to examine the rest of the world for the coming days after his victory. Additionally, Valeria provided a good framework for the self-learning neural net that all future Doombots will be based on. Every action she put into play was another task memorized. Soon, there would be no need to copy Doombot data through his armor. They would all be developed enough to function on their own.

A proximity alarm jolted Doom out of his thoughts.

"What's that? asked Valeria. A smirk spread across her face. "Are we getting invaded? Am I going to get to test this thing out live?"

Red blips dotted the holo-map of the forests fifteen kilometers from the prison, approaching slowly through a region that Doom had designated as the perimeter.

Interesting. The Baron has responded with due haste. Perhaps the Vladimir of this Latveria would prove to be a more interesting mongrel to skin.

"Indeed," said Doom. "I believe that it is due time for a trial by fire."

There looked to be hundreds of incoming hostiles, spread and multivariate in function. Small units of soldiers moving through the woods under the cover of darkness acting as a vanguard. Amusing. It appeared that the Baron's forces were attempting to play special forces. Not far behind followed convoys of trucks and armored vehicles, delivering the main detachment of the forces no doubt. There were a few jets in action as well. Bombers, they looked like. Old American Thunderstreaks that should have been retired. They would need to go first.

" _Updating target priorities,"_ echoed _Sulu_ as Doom's neural network transmitted primary target designations. Valeria's HUD lit up in an augmented display of combat information, analyzing her foes and isolating priority targets.

"Take the jets first," said Doom. "It would be for the best that they meet their ends away from the camp. It would be remiss of us to disturb the jubilations of our newly freed citizens, wouldn't it?"

Valeria smirked in reply. A viridescent streak of light scared the midnight horizon as she pushed the Doombot to the limits of its speed, accelerometer indicating a transition to Mach 3.

"This is where the fun begins."

It didn't take long for her to sink past the clouds and track down her quarry.

The squad of bombers came into view, a sloppy scattered flight group believing themselves to be the hammer when they were but pieces wood on a chopping block. Considering their loose approach and pathetic coordination, they were likely expecting this to a be a fly-by bombing and nothing more.

It was best to educate them on this mistake.

Plasma-blade igniting like the edge of dawn splitting through the darkness, _Sulu_ met its quarry headfirst as its thrusters went into overdrive and swung its blade in an arc.

The first blow of the revolution was a thing worthy of being committed to ballad.

Plasma jetted through the back of the first bomber as both jet and pilot fell bifurcated, smashing through the woods below in twin paths of destruction. _Sulu_ passed through the wreckage untouched.

The other two bombers veered away violently, jolted from their casual run with the sudden demise of one of their own.

They flew erratically in vain attempt to preserve their own lives. It was clear that their nerves were lost to the frenzy of war. Not that much could be said about the mettle of the Baron's men in any universe, it seemed. Automated combat targetting systems guided Valeria's aim as the _Sulu_ calculated the vector trajectories of the bombers by the milliseconds. A lance of fusion punched through the center of one bomber as its fuel ignited under the intense heat. The wreckage fell as a meteor, engulfed in flames, smashing through the trunks of trees below, debris spilling upon the unfortunate squad of infiltrators below as a rain of shrapnel. The lance of energy curved, cutting down trees and turning the earth beneath to glass and slag, slicing a wing clean off the last bomber.

It twisted violently in the air, spinning out of control as it flew to the clutches of gravity. By a microsecond, the pilot ejected as bomber crumpled like wet tissue before the approaching charge of the Doombot that slammed into the plane at full speed. Seizing the front end of the plane, metal screamed as _Sulu_ torn the jet asunder through raw force alone. "Holy shit," Valeria breathed, heart pounding in exhilaration. "Is this what its like to be you?"

Beneath his helmet, Doom managed a small smirk. "Not even barely."

The surviving pilot floated down tied helplessly to his parachute, eyes widening with terror as the metal demon that tore his jet apart rose to meet him. Its glowing eyes were burned into his memory, green and bright, as if he was gazing into the maw of hell. "G-god protects me," he said, bringing a cross to bear from beneath his jacket. "A-away with you, demon! Away!"

Valeria tilted her head and chuckled. "He isn't here, _comrade_ ," said Valeria, voice coming like grinding metal through _Sulu_ vibro-synthesizers. "Up here, there is only you and me."

Light flashed across the pilot's face as he began to weep. She brought up her blade bringing it close to the man's face, savoring his fear, his pain by the second. He deserved this. For what he and his kind did to her, to her people, to everyone in this nation. He deserved to greet the gates of hell.

In silence, Doom watched Valeria as she held the position, _Sulu_ frozen in place _,_ waiting to see what she would do.

Fist tightening, Valeria snarled as _Sulu_ swung across the pilot's neck. A half-melted cross fell, severed from strings to the world beneath. A pilot let out a sob as he slowly reached for his neck.

And found himself untouched by the blade.

"You deserve to die," said Valeria. "You and _every other dog_ that serves the Baron deserves no less than the hell that you wish so desperately avoid. But I'm not you. I'm not like you. I will not give you death." Without any hesitation, she pressed the edge of the inactive plasma-cutter across his brow, intense heat sizzling flesh as the man howled with agony. "I'll mark you for life instead."

She ripped the cutter away from his face, skin and melted tissue peeling off as sinuous strands stuck to the cutter and burned away as _Sulu_ released the screaming man.

"Well," said Valeria, sweat pouring off her brow. "That was... therapeutic."

"You did not kill him." The work came more as a statement than a question.

"No," said Valeria. "Displeased? Think me weak for not finishing him off?"

He answered her with silence. "There are adversaries yet, girl. Deal with them first."

Combat telemetry updating in real time, _Sulu's_ HUD came alight again, indicators highlighting the convoys next.

 _Sulu_ dove low. Extending a hand towards the convoy, ignoring the bullets bouncing off its exterior from the few astute turret gunners, a stream of energy washing over the convoy like a tidal wave of force. The truck at the head of the detachment faded into nothing as it was swallowed by the light. Steel melted off the sides of the vehicles that followed in its wake, gunners atop jeeps bursting alight and coming apart as burning smolders of ruined meat. Metal sank into the soil below as slag and soil, where it was touched, cracked as glass.

As the _Sulu_ finished its attack run, the few unfortunate survivors cried out in unison as their bodies joined the steel of their cars and transports, the heat melding everything together, pulling them apart as everything began to suffuse.

Along the sides of the road, the trees caught fire from the heat alone.

Valeria ripped the visor from her head. Her eyes were glossed over, looking forward as she took in breaths slow and deep.

"Valeria?" said Doom

"I'm fine," she said. It was a poor lie. The killing that needed to be done was one thing but fire had a way of marking the strongest soul. "I'm fine." She placed the visor back atop her head, sliding down as if it were a crown of thorns. "I wanted to do this. I could have stopped at any moment. I wanted to do this."

"There is no need to lie-"

"I am not lying!" Valeria snapped. She swallowed. "Update targets."

For all her belief of vengeance and her capacity for it, it became all too clear that her nature was not meant for war. Doom looked upon her stolid face, held together by hidden resolve and he saw himself. He saw himself in his youth, and for the first time in years, remembered the face of the first man he had killed with his own two hands.

"Very well," said Doom.

She made several more run on the few other convoys too foolish to scatter before her coming. Like a scalpel of fire, she burned indelible lines into the Earth that would take years to heal. Smoke was rising from the woods now. The vanguards were breaking rank on their own, most fleeing on their own accord of the fires rising behind them and the sudden decimation of all allies supporting them. By the end of her final sweep, the patchwork of dripping steel and flesh-stripped bodies came together in a cackling effigy of wax-like ruin. The coming assault, for all intents and purposes, was broken.

Except for one final group, still flashing red on Doom's holo-map. The pressed forward through the woods at an alarming pace. Pushing forward as if there was no way back.

Without hesitation, Valeria guided the _Sulu_ after her final set of targets.

She smashed through wood and trees like a wrecking ball, reckless and unstoppable. Touching down in the dirt before the group, _Sulu_ lifted a glowing palm at the group and froze in place.

As did they.

Expecting a contingent of soldiers, Valeria found a ragged band of creatures with glowing collars around their necks. No. Not creatures. Distorted. These were people. Or once were.

Doom expanded the Doombot's visual-link within his own helmet.

Mutants? Or perhaps just metahumans. At the very least, their existence was now confirmed to him.

Tumorous growths spread across their bodies in different places. At the head of the group, the man leading them had a porous growths spreading across his arm to his shoulder that spat gouts of acid upon the ground as he narrowed his eyes at the Doombot. The other five took their places behind him. Three of them looked shaken at the sight of _Sulu,_ their limbs mishappen in mass and form but otherwise normal. A young girl, stood at their center, likely no older than Valeria herself. Where her eyes were, there was but a gaping wound of light. The sixth member of their party stood to chitter, the most aberrant amongst them. It fell somewhere between a mantis and a man, as edges of a carapace and blades pushed through tight skin threatening to give and tear at any second.

The air grew pregnant with tension as _Sulu_ ignited its cutter, revealing just how terrified those gathered before her looked.

"Let us pass," said the man at the head of the group. "Let us pass and we will petition the Baron to grant you a reprieve."

"Go home," Valeria replied. "While you still can."

A broken expression came over the man. "That hasn't been a choice for a long time."

With that, the peace was broken.

Swinging an arm at _Sulu,_ a splash of acid hit the raised arm of the Doombot, melting into the exterior of the titanium as he charged with a cry. On reflex, Valeria thrust her other hand forward to keep her foe away and felt her cutting go through without resistance. _Sulu_ lowered its arm as Valeria met the man, face to face as the light left his eyes. Acid flowed free from his lips and open pores as he stepped back, clawing at the wound in his chest. He toppled over, breathing his last as he stopped struggling.

Then, the collar around his neck detonated.

The force of the impact sent _Sulu_ stumbling back, fire licking across its titanium plates.

"What the fuck just happened!" cried Valeria.

"Dead man's switch," said Doom. "That's what their collars are. They are not here by their own accord."

Through the smoke of darkness, the half-mantis fell upon Valeria with preternatural speed. Snapping through the smoke, its blades came down against _Sulu's_ frame as the metal screamed. Cutter still active, Valeria swung up and was intercepted by a misshapen arm, grasping _Sulu's_ wrist in a deadlock. His comrades quickly followed after, tackling the Doombot without grace, only desperation. At the very back, a light peered through the fading smoke as the girl walked forward and the light where her eyes should have been burned bright.

 _"Extra-dimensional energy detected,"_ said Sulu.

They weren't mutants. Doom realized that now. They weren't even naturally empowered. These were people touched by sorcery. Ruined by it. Which meant that there was something in the land that was bleeding eldritch energies into this universe.

A plume of ensorcelled fire clashed with a blast of fusion energy as _Sulu_ forced its free hand across the half-mantis's shoulder. The clash held even as the few distorted attempted to assist their fellow in bringing down the golem that they faced. It was a vain attempt. For all the power that the girl could channel, it was clear that her vessel was distorted rather than empowered. Blood seeped down her wound as her lips quivered in pain. With an anguished cry, the light broke and she fell to her knees.

Smoke rose from her skull.

 _Sulu_ cracked the half-mantis across its chittering mouth with a closed fist. The blow sent it flying aside, tumbling through dirt and grass until it collided hard against a tree trunk and its body folded across it from the force. It twitched a few times and went still. Fire enveloped the tree as clumps of dirt rained everywhere from the resulting explosion.

The remaining few distorted came apart as _Sulu_ forced its hand free and swept wide with its blade. Three heads fell. Three bodies followed.

Silence remained.

Valeria heaved with heavy breaths back in the barracks. She turned her sight upon the only survivor.

The girl, clawing blindly in the dirt, lost in darkness in spite of the light that spilled from her. It was a pitiful sight.

She found purchase on a steel foot before her. Shaking slightly, she looked up, and thought she saw nothing, she felt the heat of the blade that rested at _Sulu's_ side. "Please," she begged, reaching to find the blade. "Please. Release me from this."

Valeria's breath hitched. "What happened to you?"

The girl went quiet for an instant. "I remember the mines. Mother. Father. The others. Then, there was this light, there was always this light always there-always bright-bright! So bright! Blinding bright! Too bright. Please. Take it away. I want to rest. I want to rest. _Please."_

"Her mind is gone," said Doom. "A common outcome from exposure to the beyond for an unprepared mind."

"What?" said Valeria. "This is the result of _sorcery?"  
_  
"That is a possibility," said Doom. "There are other ways of exposure. Places were the veil is weaker. Unfinished rituals. Eldritch materials leftover from bygone eras. It matters not now. You should grant her wish. She exists but is no longer alive. Not as a person at the very least."

Valeria stiffened.

"Girl?"

"No," sighed Valeria, "I started it. I'll see it through."

The final swing came fast and quick before regret could tempt her into stopping herself. Before she had another chance to think. A split bomb collar fell to the dirt as the light faded from a wound and fell from the horizon as dawn rose in the horizon. As brightness washed over the horizon, Valeria looked down at the body of the girl, and the destruction that she wrought. Fires roared in the distance. Smoke rose from the ruined convoys that she left dead on the sides of the road. There was a clearing in the forest now from where she came in. Out there somewhere, a pilot's probably running for the hills.

Valeria pulled off her visor, eyes glossed over and lost in thought. She held out the visor to Doom. He took it back from her and reset _Sulu_ to its automated functions. For a few tense moments, he watched her, wondering if she would cry, or if something was broken on the inside.

Instead, there came a bitter chuckle. "I guess I have a bit of my mother in me after all."

Her mother? Could it be...

"Your mother," began Doom. "Is her name Cynthia? Cynthia Werber"

She nodded nonchalantly. "That's what people tell me."

What was this girl? Not only a haunting replica of his past. Not only an amalgamation of all others he knew who have shared her namesake. More than that. An existential alternative appellation of his being mingled with those the two other's he holds dear? Doom fought the urge to cradling his head in his hands and keep the coming aneurysm at bay.

If this was Richards' doing, then the man had almost certainly gone mad. What purpose could this serve, matching him with a young variant of himself, looking like a mix between the two Valerias that he knew? What lesson was there to learn? What point was there to distill the image and likeness of them into his past?

"I see we're taking turns staring off into space," said Valeria.

"I... yes. I was thinking," Doom grumbled. This was going to be a headache. How was he supposed to view her now? As himself? Half of himself? Yes. That would make sense. His father was dead in this universe, after all, so she carried with her the essence of his mother.

Who may or may not still be alive.

Which meant that Valeria likely also had ties to Mephisto, if the records were to be believed.

Mephisto.

For all Doom knows this could be his doing.

If that was even what the devil went by in this universe.

Damnation. For everything learned there was always three more questions that follow.

Valeria regarded him inquisitively. "Doom. Do you know something about my mother?"

 _Damn her perspicacious nature._

"It is late," said Doom. "You should go to bed."

"Technically it's early," she said, "and I don't feel like sleeping anymore. I would like to stay."

They matched glares in silence, each waiting for the other to react.

"If you are to stay," said Doom, "you shall do so in silence. No more inane questions. No more distractions."

"Fine. But sometime, sometime soon, I want some answers."

Doom gave her a look. "That is something we can both agree on."

...

Up towards to the north crown of the world, a single Doomdrone drifted over a horizon of ice.

There were others of its ilk traversing across the world, gathering relevant information and essential data from the continents, extrapolating geopolitical conditions and essential information from signals and active observation as they made their runs to cover the globe. Doom created them to reveal the true form of this world and do so they shall. Nothing would hide from their eyes as they flew higher than any spy plane of the era could have ever reached.

Asia. Europe. Africa. The Americas. Australia. All the world had something hidden, and they would reveal it to the master as is their function.

At the edge of the world, the lone Doomdrone was no different from the others of its series, except for a single directive that was bestowed upon it that all the others lacked.

With a muffled impact, it tumbled into the ice, tensile limbs dragging itself to a halt. Beside it, a seal carcass lay unfinished and half-eaten. A family of white bears was sent fleeing into the cracks between the ice, retreating from the strange new organism that had intruded on their habitat. Scanning the area, the drone began absorbing data from the world around it as it began to emitting waves of sensory particles that sank below the ice, echoing into the abyss that was the Arctic, searching fruitlessly through the cold and thick.

For hours, it repeated the same action, bouncing from point to point as it narrowed down the potential area of its designated target. A designated target that, when considering the sheer extent of change in this world, could very well be nonexistent himself.

Which seemed to be the case until a distant echo came back. The Doomdrone's eyes rotated and blinked.

There was something beneath the frozen shores of Greenland, not far from it.

It fell upon the icy shores in an instant, focused beam of energy melting through the shield of frost, sinking deeper into the unknown. Louder and louder the echoes came back. Closer and closer it got to what it sought, what the master wanted. It kept going until it seemed like it was cutting into glass and steel.

Until it realized that it was.

Halting all actions, the Doomdrone scanned the reinforced glass, the frosted steel around it, and deeper still behind it. Light poured into the belly of darkness that was beyond.

Almost just beyond the point of notice, a glint flashed off the edge of a shield with a star at its center.

...

 _A/N: Doombots makes killing easy in action but murder and torture still don't taste good, even for one who wants vengeance. Valeria, being a girl who grew up as part of repressed people in a tyrannical state, might be capable of violence but it's going to give her a few good licks of its own. One thing that amused me about the MCU is that the heroes get to murdering pretty jovially. Like Iron Man in the first movie when he attacked the terrorists. For Valeria, even with all that power dumped in her lap, the act of killing is going to get to her._

 _The distorted in some regards are semi-Lovecraftian in their inception but fitting considering their origins. That's going to be a thing in of itself. I'll just say this: there's a reason why these mines and prison camps keep needing new prisoners, and it's not just because of the guards._

 _Meanwhile, the discovery of the Valkyrie in Greenland is going to lead directly into the next arc after Prodigal Son ends in the next two chapters and the interlude commences. The Cold War was as much a battle between two rulebooks as it was a struggle between superpowers. Communism vs Capitalism, or as the west would frame it, Democracy vs Tyranny. Such would have been a time when heroes could have been used on both sides to boost morale and draw nations to their cause. Alas, the real game was beneath the skin, cloak and dagger and based in subversion, with everyone desperate to avoid a fate of fire and ruin by way of mutually assured destruction. Such a dangerous game drove both sides to extremes in their arms races and spy work._

 _Which presents a very unique opportunity for the emerging nation of Latveria to subvert the game to their own means at the hands of the enigmatic new Autocrat that has liberated the country from tyrannical clutches, or so the people would claim._

 _Winter's End aims to be the quintessential Cold War spy thriller as directed by Victor Von Doom. And by the end, I promise you this, dear reader: it's going to pack quite a bang._

 _And who knows. Maybe the world will even come to love the bombs._


	7. Prodigal Son 1-7

_1.7  
_ _"_ Failed? What do you mean the assault failed?"

The words sounded much more akin to a snarl from some wild animal than a proper noble of Latverian dignity.

The simmering flames of rage were now at a full as the Baron roared his displeasure, casting his dinner against the wall while screaming impotence. A maid swept the sharps into a tray and wiped furious away at the smear, never daring to even glance at the Baron. "The invalids- _your_ invalids. Did they not do their task? Did they abandon their mission? Their Baron?"

"They committed to the task," said General Karadick. "But their abilities fell short, my liege."

"Fell short? _Fell short!"  
_  
"Baron," cried a messenger, bursting into the throne room holding what appeared to be a disc in his hands. "Bar-"

A bullet unceremoniously went into his face. A bit of brain splattered against the side of Karadick's cheek, who blinked briefly with the nonchalance of one who was already used to such happenings. The disc fell out from the grasp of the young message, now with a gaping wound in his cheek, and rolled before the Baron. A light at its center flicked and flashed a few times before a figure suddenly formed into being in the throne room, prompting the Baron to shoot at him several more times in fright.

The bullets went through the holograph as the armored man in a cloak folded his arm and waited for the Baron's panic-induced attempts at murder to cease.

As the Baron's gun clicked empty, he lowered the weapon and realized who he was dealing with.

"Baron Vladimir Fortunov," began Doom. He studied the Baron as one would examine a maggot infested pile of excrement. "Disappointing. I had hoped that there would be something...different about you, but you appear to be the same spineless vermin as you always were."

"How dare you!" bellowed the Baron. "What right do you have to speak to the ruler of Latveria with such an impudent tongue! Speak! Lest I find you have my men loosen it by blade and fire."

"You are no ruler. Not of mine, nor of the people of this land," said Doom, voice low with contempt. "What you are, Vladimir Fortunov, is a common rat raised far above his station by a mistake of fate or circumstance, deserving nothing more than the end of a boot. But I am no tyrant, no man of ill virtue and persistent weakness like yourself. I will grant you this one chance, surrender your throne and your reign over Latveria. Surrender now. Or die at my hands."

The Baron went pale. His eyes went white. The tremors came over his body, shaking as he saw nothing but red. A guttural cry of fury broke loose from the baron. He stomped the holo-communicator, sending pieces of impossible advanced technology scattering across the ground.

The Baron held himself in place, chest swelling with growing fire, back hunched. With wild eyes, that of a tyrant denied his fill, he glowered at Karadick. "Gather everyone. Every last man. Every last woman. Every last child. Even the _dogs_ if that is what it takes. Take as many planes, guns, tanks as you will. I want him dead. I want everyone who has pledged themselves to him dead! I want their families made an example of! In the name of your Baron, I command you to deliver my will!"

Snapping a quick salute, General Karadick could not leave the room fast enough as the Baron snapped into a full frenzy. He ripped curtains from the walls, smashed glasses and tossed plates. Like a furious child, he fell upon the defenseless inanimate objects in his room in a tantrum to behold as the servants and the guards did as rehearsed and retreated along with the general. Except for the maid who fell victim to diligence, scrubbing away at a stain that just wouldn't recede. As the last glass shattered against his wall, Vladimir stopped and noticed the only living soul left in the room.

As she wept in silence, knowing her coming fate at the approach of Baron's footsteps, she threw down her rag and turned to face her master with the only braver she would ever come to know. "You're going to need to find yourself a new maid," she said, spitting on the spot that she worked so hard to clean. "And, from the sound of it, a new kingdom as well. If he doesn't kill you tha-"

Before the doors to the throne room closed, a gunshot found its way out. ...  
"So," asked Valeria, scrubbing down the sides of Sulu where much of the grime and dirt and viscera stains were. "Were you serious?"

"About?" Doom said, turning off his holo-communicator, the mirror shaped machine folding in on itself as Doom stepped away.

"The offer of surrender," she said.

Doom gave a low chuckle. "A pleasantry at best. He would have never accepted."

"Good," said Valeria. "For he's done to me. To my people. To Latveria. He has to die."

"Without question," said Doom as he made his way across the barracks, the interior now a constant symphony of roaring Matter Forges, hives of Doomdrones, and a newly set up satellite super-transponder, grand holo-screen flashing images from thousands of channels, with one perpetually left on old re-runs of Star Trek.

"I want to kill him," said Valeria clenching her fists.

"No," said Doom. "That pleasure will be mine."

"Oh, come on," said Valeria. "You already get to lead troops into battle and be the glorious leader. Why can't I kill Vladimir?"

"Because I said so," said Doom, intending for the conversation to be final.

Valeria narrowed her eyes. "You know, I never did follow up that question regarding if you knew my mother."

" _Girl."_

 _"_ I'll postpone the question if you promise me you'll let me kill the baron."

Doom stopped to consider it. "I will let you hit him. Once."

"Kill," said Valeria, "or nothing."

"You may strangle him unconscious if you can somehow manage that," said Doom. "But I will finish him off."

They locked eyes. Valeria pulled down her visor. _Sulu_ stepped forth and extended a hand. "Deal?"

Reluctantly going along with the charade, Doom shook the hand of his own creation. "Deal. Now come along girl, I will need your assistance for the next part."

Valeria's eyes came alight. "What is this? The great and glorious Dr. Doom needs my help? What do you need me-"

"Gather the leaders among the prisoners," said Doom. "Including your grandfather. Have them create militias. We're going to take the south of Latveria by the end of this week. Then you may return to scrubbing the Doombot."

"That's it?"

"Wait," said Doom, bringing up a holographic interface from his gauntlet and cueing a creation within for one of the forges. "When you return from your task, a drone will bring you a series book that you will begin reviewing immediately.

Valeria frowned. "Define series."

"Around hundred books or so to begin with," said Doom. "That should teach the fundamentals of magic theory and the rudiments of science. I expect you to finish it all by the end of today. _"  
_  
"Today? Are you insane?"

"No. Merely overly ambitious in my expectations of you," said Doom, as he began to walk towards the doors leading out the barracks. " _Sulu,_ engage academic protocols. Gather a tally of mistakes the girl makes, no matter how minute and place a restriction on her manual riding time based on the sum of her failures."

" _Sulu a_ cknowledges _,"_ said _Sulu._ "All hail the Doctor."

This should prove to be a good test regarding if the educator function was still intact within the base model Doombot functions. There will be a drastic need for teachers for the children of Latveria to have a future, after all.

"Time is fleeting, Valeria," said Doom as light flooded into the barracks as the door unlatched and folded open. "Fleeting by the second."

"Doom," said Valeria, betrayal evident on her face. "You're a piece o-"

The doors shut. ...  
War was but a companion to Boris. He served as a soldier of fortune in his youth, fighting for coin and pleasure till his heart moved on to deeper desires. He commanded troops in Finland, trading lives for ever step he gained. He faced the fascists, from Russia to Berlin, the habit of stepping over ruined figures that were once his comrades. He still dreamed of Stalingrad on some nights, of the warm caress of the blazing bodies that kept the touch of General Winter from taking him like it did the rest of his family.

This was no war. What he was a part of, what Doom was waging was indeed a campaign.

A campaign to break Baron Vladimir's will for all of Latveria to see. This was a slow death. Delivered by an avatar of vengeance itself to a petulant despot that was far out-matched.

In the wake of the Doombots, golem-like machines that walked through bombs and bullets and spat rays of death back with impunity, he led the volunteers in their charges. Too often, he'd find himself trying to catch up to the machines, even as they deliberately slowed themselves to give him and rest of the mortals a chance to participate, to join in the tide battle. A tide that they had already thrown back across the other side. Their victories came like songs of old. Glory and slaughter, two sides of the same coin.

And ahead of them all, Doom stood at the head of the vanguard, untouched by all, warping the battlefield with mere gestures, obliterating platoons of men as beams of burning light leaped from his palms and cut down all who dared stand against him. Tanks folded into themselves as sorcerous symbols flared in kaleidoscopic patterns of fading sparks. Coruscating blasts of eldritch energy spilled loose from his body and rent jets from the sky. A grim glow of a second dawn birthed in his hands as he turned the soil to glass and men to ash.

Watching how he fought, Boris understood. Boris knew. He was delivering victories to them. Fattening them on hope and the succor of victory, allowing them to kill the spoils and break their oppressors. Like a mother bird to its chicks.

His was a promise of catharsis for all those downtrodden and beaten by the Baron.

Walking past lines and rows of captured soldiers-many of whom have surrendered or now wish to defect to the side of Doom by their own volition-Boris took a look around at his changing world.

Hard to believe that only a week has passed since his emancipation. Whatever medical drones injected him with made him heal a lot quicker than he could remember. He hoped that it wasn't causing brain damage to him as a toll.

To his east, a village stood in ruin to its former self, a windmill burning not far away. But beneath the destruction the people stood outside in awe, beholding the impossible they had just witnessed, the Baron's men sent scattering to the winds, Doombots coming down from the clouds to extinguish the fires of the windmill and repair their damaged homes.

To the west, past the lines of prisoners that walked, some with heads lowered, some with mouth and eyes wide, piles upon piles of guns were melted down to slag by volunteers with atomizer packs. The material would be then stored and transported back behind battle lines to feed the forges that churned and built day and night, not only creating new and wondrous weapons for the those that fought under Doom but also improvements for all noncombatants that lived beneath his growing sphere. Boris remembered there being something of a goal to melt down three hundred more guns and a tank to reach the material requirements to establish another sewage recycling plant. Apparently, it was much like a sewage system in that it dealt with piss and shit but instead of letting it spill out somewhere, it disintegrated what went through it to add to the nation's energy.

It was something out of a madman's dreams. Or a genius. Maybe there wasn't much difference.

The North and south weren't much different, with the line of prisoners extending into the horizon. He remembered there being some trees up North earlier. Doom waved his hands at it and now the trees were walking south, sorcery granting them animation, the baron's soldiers that hid amongst them now impaled on their branches like crowns of death, contours of their bodies writhing their last in the backdrop of the fading sun.

Boris shook his head. Even his gun was ineffable. The fucking thing didn't fire bullets, for one thing. Instead, it spat beams of adjustable intensity. The gun even did much of the aiming for him, its holo-scope calculating firing trajectories and zooming in on distant targets when necessary. Boris swore the damn thing even cried for him to take cover earlier when he was under fire. Which brought him to his jacket, which had percentage displayed on his wrist of "scale-fiber integrity rating" or something. All he knew was that it stopped bullets like nothing else and was what Doom referred to as "adequate for now."

It also accommodated itself to the wearer's temperature.

That's not even going over what Doom replaced the standard combat logistics system with. Everyone had some kind of radio in battle. Not that most of anyone knew how to work it properly. Not that most people he was fighting alongside could even read anyway. It's the thought that counts.

Boris pulled out his flask of vodka a took a swing to take the edge off. Somehow, it made complete sense that the best outfit he would ever be a part of would be run by a mad genius.

"Your presence is requested by the Doctor."

Vodka sprayed all over the head of the Doombot that appeared from of nowhere.

"Fucking-fuck!" cried Boris, coughing. "Where the fuck did you come from?"

"Above," said the Doombot.

"Ah. Of course."

"Your presence is-"

"Yes, okay," said Boris. "Where? Where is Doom?"

"Follow the road south to the Kylne River," said the Doombot. It then lifted off without a goodbye.

Boris looked up at the disappearing green dot. "Fucking creepy golems."

He followed the path down south, past the walking trees now digging into the Earth and replanting themselves back into the dirt. Past the mobile clearing, Boris looked at the horizon. Hassenstadt, the capital city of Latveria. The castle of the Baron rose above the city like a sword held high over the innocent. It was still far but now within sight. Burning resolve filled Boris' guts. Actually, it was vodka, considering he was drinking all the way there. Before him, where the land sunk low was the Klyne River, Doom standing along with Valeria at the shoreline.

Wait. Valeria.

"So, tell me again why we don't just go over and kick the castle down?" said Valeria.

Doom glare out at the Baron's sanctuary with winter-like hate. "Because we must break him first. Leave no supporters for him. No place for him to hide or flee. All of Latveria will behold his fall."

" _And my glorious ascent,"_ said Valeria, mimicking Doom's voice.

"Mock me again, girl and I will seal you from your precious _Sulu_ for a month."

Valeria folded her arms. "Was just finishing your sentence for you."

"Valeria," said Boris, uncertain what he was hearing.

"Grandpa!" Valeria cried, rushing over and slamming into the older man's chest with a hug. Batting her eyes. "Kill anyone today?"

"Many," said Boris.

"Vodka?" she asked.

He handed what was left of his bottle to her, shaking his head she downed it in one go. " _Little Witch."  
_  
Aside from them, Doom regarded casual question pertaining to murder and questionable family habits with passing concern. "Boris," said Doom, the name coming slow and awkward. It was hard to see him as the Boris he knew now, the red-faced white-beared manservant that had brought him wine. The man standing before him was cleanly shaven with scars from past battles and brawls littering the right side of his face. One of his eyebrows was partially missing beneath a burn scar that formed a valley of tissue that ran along the right side of his skull. He reeked of booze and death in equal measure, eyes holding the mild disinterest at the trees full of corpses he had passed as only a man who had experienced the worst terrors of war could.

No. He was no longer fit to be a manservant but there was another role he could occupy.

"Chairman-comrade-Doctor. Dr. Doom."

Doom gave him what could only be described as a pitying stare from a man to his phenomenally dull dog that he can't stop caring about. "You are making progress with remembering my title, Commander Boris. Admirable."

"Commander?" said Boris.

"Yes," said Doom. "I have decided to promote you."

Boris blinked. "Very Nice. Did not know we were doing ranks now. I assume we are still militia, _da?"  
_  
"In the present, perhaps. There will come a time when this war will end, though, Commander, and when it does the new state of Latveria will need a new administration to guide it into a new age. Along with leaders worthy of looking up to."

Boris stared at Doom for a moment and burst out laughing. "Valeria-Valeria...he's said...he said..." Boris swallowed his mirth. "Sorry. You are funny man Doom." He tried to slap Doom across the shoulder but his hand cracked against a kine-shield instead.

An expressionless metal face and petrified Valeria making throating slitting signs to make him stop told him that he had made a terrible mistake. "I apologize," said Boris, backing up slightly. "I got...excited."

Doom's eyes narrowed. "See that you contain yourself before you do something that you might regret, Commander."

Valeria breathed a sigh of relief.

"Still," said Boris. " I can't be Commander. I thank you for offer but I must refuse."

"I reject your refusal," replied Doom.

"What?"

"Doom denies your refusal," said Doom a second time.

Boris blinked again. He turned to Valeria. "Can he do that?"

Valeria shot Doom a dirty look. "Can he?" she asked.

"Doom does what he wills," said Doom, patience clearly waning. "Answer me this, Boris: why do you believe that you cannot be Commander of the future Latveria Guard when some impotent vermin can clearly occupy the current spot of general under the baron?"

"Because I am drunkard," said Boris honestly. "Also I have bad knee and get scared talking to many people at once."

"The first can be remedied without a problem," said Doom without hesitation. "The second can be replaced. The third will disappear with due practice. You have no more excuses. Doom hereby accepts your acceptance of the high honor bestowed upon you by Doom for the commission of Commander of the Latverian Guard under the just rule of Dr. Victor Von Doom, rightful king of Latveria." Doom shoved a badge into Boris' hands. "As per my orders, you shall report to the infirmary at dawn tomorrow so that neuro-corrective surgery may be conducted to remove your dependence on alcohol. Do not be late, or Doombots will be sent to escort you to the infirmary for your own benefit."

With that said, Doom gave Boris a small nod and walked off in the direction of the village to the growing cheers of his men.

"Well...I'll see you for dinner Grandpa Boris," said Valeria, patting her adopted grandfather on the back. "Don't get shot okay." She then ran along after Doom, berating him for treating Boris so poorly.

Boris looked down at the badge emblazoned black and green with a cross that formed a circle, with white horns within it on one end, and Doom's masked visage on the other. The words, _COMMANDER OF THE LATVERIAN GUARD_ was carved in decorative script on both sides.

"Fuck me," breathed Boris, newly christened Commander of the Latverian Guard. Future Latverian Guard. ... _A/N: When writing this, there is always a question of how far I should push Doom's technological aptitudes. What magic offers for personal utility in Marvel, technology offers for absolutely mad-levels of civilization alterations. I'm talking two steps away from being accepted as a school science project within the Culture or Xeelee levels of stuff, which might not sound very impressive until you go over some of the stuff those settings have. Depending on the writer, Doom sometimes goes even past that and just up and creates a cosmic power vacuum. As he did to the Silver Surfer, quite easily. In other examples of his hyper-tech dickery, he spiked nanomachines into Wakanda's water supply or something, allowing him to monitor and host a coup of T'Challa in Doomwar so he could steal all that delicious vibranium. There was no mention if the nanomachines allowed the human body to harden in response to physical trauma but the potential is there. He's also made a time machine before, with many of the disturbing implications that might have._

 _Ultimately, Doom's tech, much like all tech and even power levels in Marvel fluctuate violently depending on the writer. Sometimes, Doom is the only one who has all that nice tech hidden in his castle while the peasants live nice but peasant like lives. Other times, he's showing off a jousting tournament between two people in power armor riding on hoverbikes. The second, obviously, is utterly ridiculous and bombastic which is probably more accurate to the character of Doom in my opinion. The point is that what this offers me is a certain level of freedom to decide Doom's capacity to flip off reality, which is great because that means I can keep it as awesome as possible but still based in story pattern consistency (which, when it was established when Doom needs matter to transmute, he can't just suddenly make things from thin air without very good justification such as having an infinity gem or he's finally built that replicator for Valeria for all her Kirk-LARPing needs. This way, you don't run end up breaking the suspension of disbelief, which surprisingly isn't hard to do with how crazy this setting is. Readers are pretty good a noticing cracks in the patterns.)_

 _The tension with Doom isn't that he does something difficult. It's how. And often times, how he screws himself afterward, either from his own hubris or by Richards (RICCCHHHAHRRRDDSS!) prodding._

 _This narrativium-forged limitation and several yet disclosed reasons are a large part of why this story didn't just end with: "And then Doom made all the Doombots and beat up everyone forever."_

 _History lesson: Doom's college project to build a megaphone that connects to hell so that he can yell the devil into surrendering the soul of his mother was called a Necrophone. Take from that what you will but I like to think that it had a low-level A.I. that was voiced by Bruce Campbell._


	8. Prodigal Son 1-8

_1.8_  
Amid the ruins of his own making, Baron Vladimir seethed at the cursed horizon that lay beyond the grand balcony of his personal chambers, nestled atop the highest keep of Castle Hassenstadt. The barbarians were at the gates, their coming foretold by the growing flames that drew closer to his capital every day.

His beard was an unkempt mess, the odor of sweat and wine pluming from the strands of white hair that were clumped together wet and ungroomed. His eyes were bloodshot and dark with misery and weary rage. Sleep defied him, much like the cowards that he once referred to as subjects. Had he known that all it would take to break them was a moment of hardship and a few losses he would have taken their families as motivation. He would have taught them to fear him better. Draining what was left of his Hassenstadt 42', some of the wine escaped his lips and found a place on the collar of his voluminous robes.

"My lord," said Karadick, head bowed, cowed more than ever before. Shadows crept into his gaze as if he was still trapped in the past, facing fires that were still burning in the distance, listening to the screams that would never fall silent in his mind.

"General," said Vladimir. There wasn't much rage left for him to muster. What little left to burn had been spent as he smashed his room apart in momentary frenzies of anger and despair that trailed each loss. "How do we fare?" He knew the answer to his question. All he had to do was turn his eyes to the horizon.

"We've lost the exterior, sir. Tammenek, Raddiovik. Both cities lost. Along with all mines in the region and any forces we had left," the words came easy, as such things would to a man who had long-since buried half of his forces in the span of a month. "The 4th and 11th are all we have left."

"Infantry?" asked Vladimir. "No support."

"Doom still has his anti-air emplacements on the Carpathian Mountains. There will be no air support." Not much more needed to be said about that. The Carpathian ranges cradled much of Latveria. With it controlled, Doom effective decided who would enter and leave the conflict. This didn't just mean that he held the sky. He held the borders as well.

"Armor?"

"Ten tanks between the companies," said Karadick. "Maybe some lighter ones too."

And no more were coming since Doom blitzed the factories and spurned the workers to switch sides if only to save their own lives.

"And Hassenstadt?" asked the Baron. "These walls have held for generations. The castle has been in the hands of the Fortunovs for centuries."

There was no lie to tell. "My liege," said Karadick, choosing to no say anything at all, "we must discuss your immediate evacuation from the city." Karadick gave the skies before them, darkening suddenly as if lulled by some unnatural power. "He's almost upon us."

The sun had been banished, the light exiled by a reign of a coming storm.

A storm holding itself in the visage of Doom.

" _ **Surrender."**_

The smoke from distant battlefields granted shape to his mask and hood, the flames of ruin granting his eyes an unholy glow. Eldritch soot rained from the ruinous clouds that formed the simulacrum of Doom, melting stone and poisoning the land around Hassenstadt. The crops died in moments, trees and flowers alike wilting from the virus that took hold in their roots. The Earth fell to rot and grew barren before the Baron's eyes. The aging tyrant's jaw clenched as his veins bulged. Was it not enough that Doom takes from him his land? His pride? His power? Now the whoreson had to defile the very land itself?

" ** _Surrender,"_** repeated the simulacrum, each thunderous utterance causing the Earth below to shudder. " _ **Surrender and be granted clemency at the mercy of Doom. For the weak, the blind, the helpless, seek the Kylne River. Brave the journey and you have Doom's solemn oath that you will be guarded. All can be healed. All can be restored. All can be made better through submission to Doom. I seek no reparations from the poor, nor do I find pleasure in the torment of the needy. No. There is only one soul that needs suffer. One alone. Baron Vladimir Fortunov. His time has come. Yours has only begun. Surrender."  
**_  
"Bastard," hissed the Baron, words unheard before the rumbling of the simulacrum.

From the direction of Tammenek, left in ruin amidst mounds of dead loyalists, Doom's forces came, falling upon the capital from the horizon like a tide of iron, sweeping the feeble defenses aside as a typhoon would winnow grass from the trees. Those who dropped their arms lived. The rest joined the fire. Grand chimeric war machines with the cannons of tanks, the hull of battleships, and some limited capacity of flight. Doom's men followed behind the bulwark of tanks and their glimmering fields of ablative shields, firing through the inside of the shield as the lancing beams of their guns flashed clear even from the highest peak of the castle.

The sky was littered with glowing streaks of viridescence, barrages of heated-rounds of Hassenstadt's few remaining anti-air spitting what little they had left against the Doombots that held the skies. Lances of raw energy cut downwards in response, giving rise to fields of fire. Flashes of light in the distance told the tale of the death knell of the last of Hassenstadt's defenses. "My liege," said Karadick, "we need to discuss your departure."

"I will not be leaving," said Vladimir, eyes narrowing at the simulacrum that bore a resemblance to his hated foe. "I'm taking my descent into the Oubliette."

"The Oublie-Baron," said Karadick, eyes widening in terror, "going alone means-"

"Yes," sighed the Baron. "But death is certain either way. I would prefer it to be on my terms." From within his robes, he produced two letters signed and sealed by the sovereign ring of Latveria. "General," said Baron Vladimir, hands shaking slightly. "My time has come. But the Fortunov line may yet rise to greater glories. Give these to Rudulfo. And Zorbra."

As Karadick extended a hand to receive the letters, the Baron gripped his arm, fingers locking tight like iron s. "Know this, General. This delivery is a final gift of mercy and forgiveness I bestow upon you," his hot breath stank from dehydration, his eyes bore down like growing wounds of madness in the mind. "You have failed me. Failed Latveria in letting Doom overcome us. But for your past deeds, and by merit of your continued loyalty, I absolve you of any sentence." That and Karadick was the only one left that he could trust. "My sons are not to return to Latveria should I fail. Tell them to seek greater glory and plot their vengeance from afar. Swear this to me."

The General gave a steady nod. "Yes, Baron."

"Good," said Vladimir. The fire of madness faded from. In its place, old age returned to its throne, as the Baron sagged in weariness. The Baron had never looked older than he did in the present moment. "Good." He glared off at the distance, glitters of hate sparking beneath his eyes at the storm-fleshed mass of tumult that was the face of Doom. "Leave now. I would like to be alone."

"Baron-"

"Leave." There was no room for argument. For the last time he ever would, Karadick gave a salute and left with a pivot. Leaving Baron Fortunov alone in the cold, a small man before the sky-painted face of a wrathful god.

Holding up his almost empty bottle of Hassenstadt 42', Vladimir looked at the visage of his adversary-arrogant bastard claiming even the sky above him-and snickered. "42' was a glorious year for my family. I thought our line was going to end then," began Vladimir, looking at the simulacrum's refracted appearance through the glass of the bottle. "When the Nazi's came, I was terrified at first. But my father saw the wisdom in acquiescing to their demands. You see, we weren't dealing with the rank and file of the Wehrmacht or the cowards that were the SS. No. Hydra was a different breed, that saw the true potential in people and places, and knew that there was a rightful fate for the deserved among that stood away from the dregs of humanity.

"I remember the first day that I met Herr Schmidt. I was barely more than a boy then. Father welcomed them into the castle with open arms and gave them a place to rest their men and sate their ardors in spite of the war. Father always seemed to know what was to come. Regardless, I remember the lesson that Herr Schmidt bestowed upon me well." Vladimir chuckled. "I daresay it made me who I was. 'Never allow the weak to dictate the place of the strong. The Fatherland learned the price of such foolishness in the aftermath of the first war. Do not fall to weakness Vladimir. Be better. Be greater. Be worthy of standing among the masters of this world's future.'"

The Baron took a final swig as he emptied the contents of the bottle into himself. "He was a brilliant man. Cut low by the dogs before his deserved time. Before his vision. But his legacy, his dream, lives on." Vladimir spat at the horizon. "What does an inhuman creature like yourself know about legacy? About sacrifice? Without my hand, Latveria will be lost. The gypsies and the impure will fester across my lands like a plague, as they already do much of Europe. Without me what glories will this nation have? It is with me that the Soviets are halted at our doorstep. It is with me that the Americans seek _our aid._ Ours. They need us! It is with me that Latveria can exist! I! Am! Latveria!" The Baron shouted, flinging his bottle off into the horizon in a burst of fury.

The simulacrum just repeated what it always did.

"Of course," said Vladimir, turning to walk the path of his father before him, to live up to the vision of his idol. "Of course you say nothing. There is nothing for some subhuman-"

"Your taste in wine is almost as wretched as your mistaken beliefs."

Vladimir froze. "Who-"

Behind him, Doom hovered, arms folded as his thrusters burned bright. The simulacrum repeated itself again, booming the background, eyes boring down as the physical form of Victor Von Doom did the same, two eyes of fire, two eyes of brown.

"You dare-how mad- _whoreson,"_ the Baron drew his pistol from his robes and fired. Pulling his shots rather than squeezing, the first two shots went wide while the rest fell like raindrops against Doom's kine-shields. The blunted rounds fell. The Baron's gun clicked empty. But even with his ammo dry, the Baron's capacity to hate was still present, his breath fermenting with loathing in the cold Latveria air. "Why are you here?"

Doom looked down at him as a man would a petulant child. "I often wondered what you were like, in the days and hours before I killed you," said Doom, to the Baron's confusion. "I know what expression you'll make when the light leaves your eyes-the fact that you will stain yourself with urine one last time as a lesser man-no, a child-would. Yet, in the years after I can't help but wonder what you were like just before. If you stayed weeping within your quarters? Raving furiously at the dawn and at your benefactors that just won't come? Or if you found some measure of peace." Doom drew closer. "I sincerely hope it's not the last because it will be for nothing. Whatever peace you may feel, I promise you, it will be fleeting."

The Baron spat upon Doom's shield.

A light chuckle escaped Doom. "Impudence. Quaint."

Pain exploded across the Baron's face as a firm backhand struck him. Flung back, the back of his shoulder crashed hard against the edge of stone on the side of the balcony, his shoulder sounding with a deep crack before he was defenestrated through the glass pane leading into his room. Gasping in pain, the Baron pressed down only to cry out as glass dug into him. Behind him, Doom landed on the balcony, lowered his hood, and followed the groveling Baron into his abode.

Once pristine bedsheets were stained with spilled wine, the shade of red seeping deeper than the blood of the fallen that now nourished the forsaken soil along the Kylne River. A crystal chandelier with golden rims lay smashed at the center of the room, the wood beneath it cracked with the boards folded up towards the ceiling. A thin layer of dust gave the room a second-skin of sorts; the maids and servants that once serviced this room had been expelled. Cleaning it was beneath the Baron, it seemed. Where there would have been bookshelves and desks were splinters and smashed pieces. The damage was complete but the age on the marks and the drying the paint around the wounds of the wall told that this was deal by multiple fits of rage over the course of this campaign.

"I must admit," Doom began, admiring the painting of Vladimir's father that remained hung high above his grand bed, the only thing in the room that remained unblemished, "it gives me more satisfaction than you would ever know to cause you so much torment. Your semblance to yourself has been a blessing in itself. Especially considering the divergence that I have noted in far too many other things."

"What the fu-"

A metal boot snapped through his lips. The Baron whimpered as he spat strands of bloody teeth, while some others were buried deeper into his gums. Doom scraped the stain of filth off his shoe against the red carpet.

"I wasn't finished," chided Doom, calm. Eyes still fixed on the painting of the senior Fortunov, Doom tore the portrait from the wall as a light glimmer of sorcery spark from his fingers. It hung, suspended in the air before him, levitating. "How many centuries that Latveria belonged to your ilk? Six? Six is far too many. Far too many men like you." Doom gave a look at the pitiful creature glaring at him with hateful, pained eyes. "I wonder... if I was cast here for a proper purpose, then what is this moment supposed to teach me? To educate me on tyranny? On mercy? Or forgiveness?" Doom chuckled. "No. If anything, I should reward you a quick death for reassuring my resolve. Listening to your banal little monologue, about legacy and superiority, has made one thing clear to me." Doom sank his fingers into the painting, the touch of magic bleeding from his gauntlet into the canvas as the Baron roared in impotent rage.

"Without me, Latveria is cursed," said Doom. "Cursed to suffer you. Or the likes of you. Folly is the only fate of my people with weak and cruel hands at the helm. This will not do. _You_ will not do. You are not the master. Nor is Hydra. None are worthy of the claim. None other than Doom."

The Baron laughed, throat thick with swallowed blood. "You? You are nothing more than a demon. A usurper. You bring ruin to Latveria."

"I bring ruin to you."

"I am Latveria!"

"No," said Doom, voice hard and cold. "You are but an old man allowed beyond his station by mistake of fate and chance."

"Fate and chance? We Fortunovs have reigned for six centuries. This is our _destiny._ Our legacy. What legacy will you leave, monster?"

"Perfection," answered Doom, as he placed a single finger upon the portrait of the Baron's father, sorcerous patterns bursting into life. "An act that begins with the rectification of... old mistakes."

The painting began to twist and alter, the paint re-blending across the portrait as hues swirled in kaleidoscopic flourishes. Where there was a wolfish-looking raven-haired man with a thick beard clad in officer's uniform, there was now only Doom, clad in his armor, the only change being the crown upon his head. With a casual toss, he cast the painting before the kneeling Baron as he turned to leave.

"No!" cried Vladimir, clawing at the altered painting, blood spilling from his lips granting the canvas its final perfect imperfections. "No! No!" Hate blazed in his eyes, alit like dark fires swirling with dark promises and darker intentions. "You... you should kill me now, usurper. Mock me no further. But know that I-"

Doom stopped. "No. You decide nothing, Vladimir. You rule nothing. You _are_ nothing. You will not die until Doom wills it. And Doom wills that until Hassenstadt surrenders to me. Until the castle falls to me. Until you are strangled into unconsciousness, you will not die."

The Baron's face affixed itself into a snarl. "I'll deny you-"

"You will deny me nothing," Doom said as he lifted into the air from the balcony. Turning to face the still kneeling, bleeding man that was the Baron, Doom folded his arms. "If you were going to relieve Latveria of yourself, you would have done it a week ago. We both know you don't have the fortitude nor the will for the act. You are a rat, Fortunov. As long as there is still a mote of light bleeding through, you will choose life. Even if the path leads you towards a fire." With a blast, Doom lifted off into the air, trailing far beyond as he left the wounded Baron behind him.

Wiping the blood from his chin, the Baron Vladimir Fortunov rose to his feet, a quiet rage settling into his bones for the first time. Looking down at the mocking disfigurement that Doom dealt his family portrait, the Baron lifted his boot and brought it down in a fierce snarl. "I am Baron of Latveria yet, cur," spat Vladimir, gazing down at the portrait of Doom beneath his feet. "And I promise you, you will regret leaving me alive. I will make you pay for this affront, this mockery! I will make you pay. Even if it the cost is my soul."

Spine straightening as he spat a last, glob of blood upon the print of Doom, the Baron spun to leave his room for one last time. His boots stomped down the cobblestone stairs of the keep as he descended lower and lower, the echoes of his steps like war drums roaring in his last stand.

Marching through abandoned halls and looted rooms, the Baron flung the doors to his throne room wide open. A lonely throne awaited him, sitting alone amid a room now devoid of finery. Chunks of the floor were missing, carved out to be sold, as were the curtains, the painted glass on the windows, even the golden goblets that were passed through his family for generations. All gone. He would never see them again, he was certain of that. But perhaps his sons might yet be denied such a scornful fate.

The throne, scarred and chipped of any adornments of value by greedy hands of scuttering rat traitors, was only still here was probably because of its immense weight. Wiping a smear of blood from his lip, he pressed a single crimson finger against the apex of the throne, where the tongues of twin wolves carved from whalebone were intertwined in an endless struggle. For a moment, nothing happened and a pit of cold rose from the Baron's stomach. Had his father lied to him? He allowed the wolves to taste his blood, that was the way to enter, was it not?

Then, almost too faintly, the blood trailed across the tongues of the wolves and their eyes snapped open, burst alight with hellish energy as the throne sparked with power. Veins of red opened across the chair, pulsing with energy in the same shade as the twisted crystals that were the primary export from his mines and of his nations. The veins spread and grew, the throne now almost a wound in space and time as the room folded away, the ground devouring the walls as space itself stretched as light bent and _broke_ around him. Like an unfathomable dream, the world around him crumpled and shattered, most of the material world dissolving away, leaving but a bridge of obsidian leading to the dais upon his throne.

Vladimir blinked in wordless horror. Madness. He sat upon a throne of madness.

The sky above him was an endless vortex of crimson, clouds of vaporous blood and fire churning above in the angry sky. Light filled this realm weakly, seeping in through the wound in reality in stolen particles, snatched from the material world as slaves more than natural phenomena. "What hell is this?" gasped the Vladimir.

 _"This is no hell."_ The voice made itself known to him, spoken like a dagger carving each syllable into his mind.

"Who! Who speaks! Reveal yourself?"

" _Follow the bridge,"_ said the voice, revealing nothing more.

Left with little recourse, and no way back, the Baron capitulated to another's demands for the first time his three decades and walked along the bridge.

" _Don't fall."_ The edges of the obsidian steps contoured into darkness and oblivion and nothing. Vladimir shuddered but carried on, making certain to stay centered on the path.

The bridge rose up, coiling like the spines of a dark serpent as it rose to the apex of a lonely peak that reached for the angry whirlwinds in the sky. Lungs burning, legs tight and sore, the Baron panted, both hands on his knees gasping for air. He climbed up the last few steps on his hands and knees.

" _It's too soon for kneeling, Fortunov,"_ came the voice. It was just ahead of him.

Lifting a weary head, sweat dripping from his beard, Vladimir came face to face with a single aged, torn page that hovered in stasis before him, held aloft on a stand of black glass, coated in coarse rivers coruscating with crystal and blood. A wordless howl came from Vladimir as his eyes wandered upon the text on the page, the scripture, the words, the sigils, whatever they were, they tore at his mind. Blood poured out from his right eye as the Baron clawed at his own face, screaming. The eye was swelling, growing too large to fit in his head. He needed to get it out. He needed to get it out!

The eye popped. Vladimir cried out in exquisite agony, his screams echoing through the dimension as he convulsed on the ground, weeping blood and tears in equal measure, suffering alone. He continued in this state for minutes. Or perhaps hours. The pain took his ability to reason a guess.

" _You seek my favor, then, Fortunov? As all your ancestors have? As your father before you did?"_ Fighting down his whimpers and struggling against his agony, Vladimir covered one eye and got to his knees.

"Y-yes," said Vladimir. "I've come to offer myself, in exchange for my legacy."

" _Come closer,"_ beckoned the voice. Looking from the periphery of his remaining eye, Vladimir was almost certain that voice was coming from the ripped page. He was also quite certain that he must be mad by now. " _Good. Now, look upon me."  
_  
Eye widening in horror, Vladimir shuddered and looked away.

" _Look upon me."  
_  
Lip quivering, Vladimir faced the book. The vastness of the script drowned his mind's eye almost immediately, expanding infinitely larger than that of himself into proportions that stretched across the sky. In the pages, the ink of the words, the words themselves he could see their writhing bodies, their flayed skin and boiled flesh, their toothless mouths screaming out as one as they were all trapped within the strokes of the word, cocooned in hives of cancerous growths. "What-what is this?"

 _"This,"_ thundered the voice, now coming from the sky, " _this is what you're family offered me. What you have offered me. Lives. Souls. Vessels to fill with bits myself."  
_  
"What?" said Vladimir, mind barely hanging by a thread.

" _I am the guardian of the Fortunov legacy,"_ said the page, the nature of the paper itself tanned from the leather of humanity, the pain palpable from the material itself. " _I am that which is made of your father, your grandfather, your great-grandfather. I am that which all Fortunov heirs come to seek in their time of need. I am a fragment. A piece of the whole. But whole enough to serve your needs."  
_  
Vladimir's lip quivered. "A fragment of what?'

" _This page has no name, only a mind,"_ said the voice. " _But if reunited with my siblings, then we are the Darkhold."  
_  
"Darkhold?" said Vladimir.

" _Names matters little,"_ said the page, " _only the question."_

 _"_ What question?"

" _What boon would you accept in exchange for your soul?"_ ...  
 _A/N: Apologies for the delay again. This one was supposed to be out to days ago but I was delayed due to trips for work. Fun, not. Anyway, the sensible reader might be asking, "You know, the Baron-even though he's a Nazi-loving bastard-is right. Why doesn't Doom just kill him?" That's a great question my imaginary audience member that might be kind of patronizing towards my actual readers. I agree with you. If it was up to me, I would have fired the Baron by this point. Not even personally. Doombot glassing run. That's it. Castle ash. The end._

 _However, Doom doesn't think like a normal fella would. Nothing short of complete despair and utter ruin will satisfy him with the Baron, and to get to kill him twice would basically be Victor Von Doom's extended moment of therapy with himself. So, naturally, Doom wants him to lose everything and break apart before he kills him. Which leads to my favorite flaw for Dr. Doom: hubris. Hubris so goddamn terrible the Greek Gods took one at him and shuddered in pity. Letting the Baron make a pact with the Darkhold-even if he is a complete fool who doesn't know magic A from sorcery B-is a terrible and shit outcome. A ten-year-old having a tantrum is annoying. A ten-year-old psyker blessed by the powers of a dark entity, on the other hand, is a literal fucking nightmare._

 _It's also the only thing that makes sense to me about how the Fortunovs were able to keep power for centuries in the MCUverse when they were as horrible as portrayed in this story as in the comics. Seriously, Vladimir kills messengers like an asshole. Here he's nice enough to shoot the guys himself but in the comics, he literally has someone else do while he mocks their pleas of mercy._

 _Anyway, hang on to your heads folks, as the next chapter ends the Prodigal Son arc as Doom's forces make their final push on Hassenstadt while the nature of the Darkhold's boon makes itself known to the Baron. For the liberation of Latveria, there will be blood with the fate of the state as the ultimate prize. And it's a good thing too cause this chapter is coming fast so stay tuned and stay frosty. Just like Cap._

 _History Lesson: Doom once owned a page of the Darkhold that he used to punch into another dimension known as the Limbo. Darkhold is nasty stuff kids. It's like the Necronomicon's more generalized cousin, dealing with more than just the undead, taking ownership of sins in general. Which means there's probably a thousand pages in that bastard on spells for continued tax evasion. Damn. Now I want the book._


	9. Prodigal Son 1-9

_1.9_

From the storm-grasped city, a lone car fled through a hidden path through the woods. General Karadick floored the pedal as the engine of the Baron's private limo roared, the dark sheen of the vehicle fading beneath the embrace of the branches of old dead trees. Maximum velocity was kept until the Hassenstadt was gone from his rearview mirror, now filled with nothing but waving trees amid the patches of looming shadow. What little light was left in the world found itself banished from the lonely path, the thicket of grasping branches too thick to pierce.

Yet, as the General's frantic eyes flashed back and forth between his mirrors, he swore that he could see orbs of nightmarish green follow him into the darkness, drifting from trunk to tree to refuge of shadow.

Out of habit, Karadick turned on his radio, receiving nothing but revolutionary broadcasts that repeated the same lines in the voice of that monster. " _Surrender."_ said the radio. " _Surrend-"_ He smashed his fist down, silencing the haunting tone of the tyrant that had driven him to this point.

Down that dark and narrow path through that valley of darkness, he drove alone.

The Baron had a private airfield around 50 klicks away from the city. Small as it was, it was probably the most sophisticated hub of travel in Latveria, meant for only the most distinguished or clandestine of guests besides being the Baron's personal place of travel. It had a jet fueled and waiting at all times, staffed and loaded for the Baron's convenience should he or his sons ever feel the need to make a getaway for a month or two. It was gift left behind by SHIELD, as thanks and an extraction point for their agents as well, should operations behind the iron curtain go wrong.

The agents within Latveria who hadn't been hunted down must have long since fled the country. Karadick could only hope that they hadn't taken his jet with them as well.

The limo burst back into sight beneath dull skies overcast with forlorn smog, an unhealthy grey settling into Karadick's lungs as he felt the urge to cough. It wouldn't be long now. All he needed to do was to round the hill and then he would be at the airfield.

As he drew closer, the smog got thicker, and his lungs found it harder to breathe. Over the contouring edge of the hill before him, he saw outlines of dancing light and a slight cackling carried by the winds.

The airfield was burning. Karadick didn't need to see the fires to know that it was. Still, hoping beyond hope, he drove onwards into the veil of smoke. The plane was the only way out of the country. The only way. If he failed here, then perhaps he would find his next best options in the flames themselves.

He didn't get far.

 _Something_ slammed against the side of his car, sending the limo tumbling over and over as Karadick jerked roughly in his seat. It rolled a few times before it came to a rough rest against a jagged rock outcropping that lay at the bottom of the hill. The limo stopped dead as the door opposite Karadick bent inwards.

World twisting around him, head pounding with blood and throbbing with a terrible headache, Karadick unbuckled his belt in his concussed stupor and fell. He found himself leaning on his shoulder as he tried to orient himself. The mirror within the car had broken off and was laying beside him. Cuts marred his face while the side of his jaw looked as if it was going to swell soon. Shaking his head, the General held on to what little coherence he had left and turned slowly as to not cut himself on the broken glass. Rearing his leg back, he kicked at the windshield. After a minute of limp stomping, the front burst off, less cracked and more dislodged as Karadick climbed out from the wreck on his hands and knees, blood cascading down from a flap of flesh hanging loose on his forehead.

The airfield ahead was an utter ruin. Torrents of fire spilled out through the ash-tinted, translucent air. He couldn't see much beyond the vague outlines of the air control tower alight like a bonfire. Then, he saw them. Those green orbs, those green eyes, glowing in slants like the usurper flooding horizon in pairs as they descended from high above.

" _Target located."  
_  
"No," cried Karadick, backing up on his rear, legs kicking ineffectually like a newborn. "Stay back! Stay back!" Reaching into his uniforms inner pocket, he drew his pistol and fired wildly. The bullets snapped through the air, disappearing into the midst. Each round pinged against something but the eyes just drew closer and closer. Soon, their shapes were visible even through the mist.

" _Acquiring target,"_ echoed their voices, metallic. Inhuman.

Taking a deep breath, Karadick placed his gun against his own temple and pulled the trigger.

It clicked.

"No! Not now! Not now!"

A metal hand reached out from the mist and caught his arm. " _Surrender."  
_  
Karadick couldn't speak. He wanted to scream but his breath, it just wouldn't come. He swung a fist into the side of the Doombot's head. The machine didn't budge. His knuckle split open.

Crying out in pain, the Doombot's drew him in closer. " _Target not cooperating. Securing target."_ Pulling him against its hold metal shell, the Doombot began to unfold, vacuum seals hissing. Eyes widening as cold metal hands forced him into the iron maiden that was the Doombot, Karadick finally found it in himself to scream.

No one heard him.

He fell face first into the darkness within the Doombot as it sealed itself again, locking its exterior and banishing the light. The darkness returned. This time, there was nothing. No lights. No contours. No trees. No radio.

Just a former general of a taken land screaming into the uncaring void.

 _"Target secured. Proceeding to detention."_

...

" _Target secured."_

Another potential problem turned to his benefit. For all the General's failures during the war, he could find pride, in these last coming days of his, of being the first organic donor to Doom's live model decoy program. His encounters with the Panther in the past had inspired him to design a new breed of decoy, meant to be perfectly imperfect. Such efforts required tissue to achieve the mimicry of sweat and odor. If not a direct transplant, Karadick would be at the very least an adequate first subject for the cloning sequence.

Regardless of the outcome, Doom would have both test subject and incision point to enter into that the misbegotten community of fools that composed Hydra.

Flying above the land, Doom tasted that long missed sweetness of sentimentality. Here was a place that, but a month ago, was still under the grip of a petulant man who had nary a method to deal with any problem that didn't involve shooting a defenseless messenger or a servant in the head. These scars and wounds left upon his land would heal-no, more than heal. Beneath his rule, Latveria will flourish anew and rise to true station, above the petty weakness that infected the conditions of weaker man, past the pointless tribalistic squabbles that festered between societies and neighbors, man and nation alike.

There is but one path to a worthy future, a horizon that was worth fighting for.

Doom's.

The beauty of this situation could not be denied; to reclaim his home a second time, using the all his experiences and knowledge that he had gained over the years, breaking Vladimir down to the very fiber. Such is a glory that few could ever hope to relieve. Victory was at hand and none could stop the will that was his.

 _No one could stop him now,_ Doom's thoughts ground to a halt as a sudden onset of unease came flooding out from the back of his mind. _No one could stop him. No one was here to stop him._

 _"Better than what you are."_

The sweetness dissolved into bitterness. The voice returned. That damned cursed voice.

 _Richards.  
_  
Though not at the forefront of Doom's mind, he found the man's words haunting him, drifting in the back of his mind, mocking him even through the enchantment of a dreamless sleep. Doom hadn't lied to the Baron. He wasn't certain that he had been cast to Latveria for a lesson anymore. Or as punishment. Or as an act of mockery. Such an action would have been far too foolish, even for Richards. Nor did it fit. Reed knew him better than that. He knew that Doom, even a robbed of his godhood, would someday rise again. It was inevitable. He was Doom.

This couldn't have been him.

Logically. It couldn't.

The four had invaded hell to stop him from taking over. They feared his capacity for power, his potential to claim the world! Reed feared him!

But he wasn't here.

 _That could only mean.._. _no, that was impossible._ Doom stopped, hovering in the air as the little men fought beneath him. Diverting full power to his sensors, mystical and fusion energy flowed in tandem. He reached out, scanning around him for across the spectrum of light, of heartbeats mingling with the vibrations of existence, of the spiritual residue of souls that lingered amidst the tapestry of the universe. Doom searched, rooting through the muck that was this world.

He found nothing.

There was no sign of Richards here, no guidance or lessons or sermons or even a sudden intrusion to stop him from taking power. By repeated calculations, Reed Richards and the Fantastic Four are long overdue for intervention by 1 hour, 3 minutes and 34.5335 seconds. Yet, the air is silent. Yet, he still holds Latveria's sky.

Yet he is still alone.

A sudden feeling of terror coiled through him.

Did Richards just decide to spare him? Cast him to another land? In an act of mercy? Like he was nothing?

Once again, his cursed words came to haunt, gnawing at the back of Doom's mind. _"Better than what you are."_

"Be silent, damn you!" Beneath his mask, Doom scowled, nostalgia breaking apart in face of frustration, as he felt the sensation of an itch tingle across that single scar on his face.

"Better," said Doom, bitterly. "Better? Better than what? Than the Baron? You know nothing of better Richards. You know nothing of suffering. Of torment or triumph. All you have ever done is mock me, Richards."

 _"And all you've ever done is delude yourself, Victor."  
_  
Doom didn't remember him saying that. "Richards? Richards? Reveal yourself!"

" _Victor,"_ said Reed, that damnable pity cutting at Doom's rage like a scalpel. " _We both know that I'm not real. You know I'm not real. If I was actually here, your sensors would have detected me by now. No. This is you're doing. Just like it always is."  
_  
Willing his boiling blood to still, Doom played the conversation on in his mind's eye. "Why would I force you upon myself? To torture myself with your presence?"

" _Because what would you do without me, Victor? We've done this thousands of times. You against me. Against my family. Time and time again, you could have killed us. But that was never the point, was it, Victor? All you ever wanted was to be the smartest. The greatest at everything. To never be that sad little boy with a dead witch for a mother."_ He could practically feel Richards sneering at him, mocking him behind his back like he always did. " _Who suffered for hours trapped in his father's frozen arms in a final embrace, screaming out for help, knowing that no one was going to come and that there was nothing he could do to save him from death either."  
_  
Beneath his armor, Doom's blood boiled, sorcerous energy spilling forth from his helmet's slits as he tempered rage with a cold will. "You know nothing, Richards!"

He could see the bastard smiling at him. " _I know enough. Enough to know your greatest fear."_

 _"_ And what is that? Being weak? Being a helpless child? I've risen beyond that, Richards! Doom has touched divinity and found it wanting! Doom has slain gods and shattered dimensions! Doom bent the fabric of reality to his whim!"

" _Weak?"_ said Reed. "Y _ou've gotten over that a long time ago. No. What really strikes fear into you is the possibility that you just don't matter."_ Doom could feel Richards' breath drift across the back of his neck as his nemesis stretched over, wrapping around him like a serpent as he leaned next to his ear. " _That I don't care enough to stop you anymore. Because you're not a threat to me anymore. Not worth my time. Less than me in every way. And best of all, you don't know if this is me leaving a mental imprint of myself in your mind or if you own admission of inferiority has left you so scarred on the inside that I should have kept your face the way it was so that the curtains match the dra-"  
_  
His words were drowned out by a maelstrom of wakefield plasma energy dichotomously infused with ensorcelled power surging forth from Doom's gauntlets. Coalescing into a beam, Doom focused the blast downwards at an empty field as unleashed his fury. Loud as the blast was, louder yet was his cry of rage.

" **Richards**!"

The blast cut deep into the flesh of the Earth, burning hot as the sides of the soil melted and shattered in fractals of glass and spatial tears. What lay below him was now but a long strip of mirror, reflecting the dull grey clouds drifting by behind Doom, floating in the air as the glow of his armor subsided.

"Richards," said Doom, a veneer of ice returning to his voice, "if you are out there, if you are listening, know this: I will prove myself to be your superior yet. Know that one cannot merely best Doom and escape unscathed. I will come for you. Godhood will not protect you. Your friends, your family-they will not protect you! Existence itself coming to your aid will not protect you! I will come for you! _Doom_ will come for you!"

No one replied.

It was just him and himself, halted by his own mind above this final battle that he was about to win. Richards wasn't here. Doom knew that. He might have altered Doom's mind, or changed some fundamental aspect of his soul, or had some special intent for him when he cast him into this place but he wasn't here. That told Doom enough. That told him that he was alone.

He needed to examine himself. Whatever Richards did-might have done-would have created deviations within the neural print of his mental status.

An explosion rumbled in the distance. A beam of solar-focused energy cut across the battlefield.

He would deal with his mental abnormalities another day, on a better day. now, there was still a war to win.

"Enough of this." Focusing his will, a portal opened up as existence rippled and fractured. With a flash, Doom disappeared.

...

Obscured by a layer of clouds, the heart of Doom's army hung over the last battle for Latveria's rebirth like an executioner's ax a breath away from finishing its swing.

Its frame bore semblance to the letter 'T' with a bulbous central hub at the very top as the control center, the obsidian warship's spine glowed bright red, the cloud-wrapped sun of noon feeding panels of power layered across its arms. A beam of concentration was focused through a lens, spearing down through the vapor above as it cut another wound into what little remained of the Baron's forces. The ground glittered with scalded ruins and burn scars that would take centuries to heal should the wounds be left untended.

Sitting at the very nexus of the hub, surrounded by dozens of administrative Doombots working on to keep battlefield logistics refreshed in real time, the Commander of the Latverian Guard knitted away with unease as his scanned across the holo-map of the battlefield. With the press of a single finger, he could call fire down from the sky, bring support to a designated location, or relay a movement order to all his forces. All from the safety of his chair, with eyes that belonged to that of a hawk. Or a god.

Boris never imagined he would be in charge of war like this.

"Grandpa. Are you still knitting?" Not far from him, Valeria floated, cross-legged sweat pouring down her brow as she held her levitation spell as long as she could. There was holo-display before her as well. It was linked to the solar cannon on the bottom of the command ship. With a lazy flick of her finger, the ship shook lightly as brightness flickered from around the edges of the ship, the bottom hull transparent from the inside.

Fidgeting hands stopped mid-action as Boris sighed. A ball of yarn fell from his lap. "I cannot stop."

"Why not?" asked Valeria with a teasing grin.

"You know _fucking_ why you little witch," spat Boris as a Doombot walked over to pick up his fallen yarn. "Doom's fucking mad robot doctor cut love for alcohol out of brain. Said I needed to find a healthier substitute hobby to replace fixation for few weeks before brain chemistry returns to homeostasis."

"It sure sounds like they added some new words to your vocabulary too."

Boris scoffed. "Hard to forget words when crazy machine holds chainsaw over your skull. Why the Doctor cannot have normal medics or doctors, I do not know. Then again, last time I question decision of glorious leader, I end up in gulag."

"Oh, Doom's not going to put you in a gulag, grandpa," said Valeria. "He might kill you. Or seal your soul into one of his machines or something. That might be more his style."

Boris considered it for a second and nodded. "Probably right. Is interesting man. Terrifying. But interesting."

"Were you afraid for me?" asked Valeria, blinking her large grey eyes at her grandfather as innocently as she could. "Afraid about how the evil Doctor might be doing terrible things to your poor innocent granddaughter? Corrupting influence on her future?"

Boris chuckled. "I was afraid you drive only savior Latveria would ever know away from country. And I have already corrupted you. He is too late."

"Grandpa, I am hurt. How could you accuse me of such things?"

Boris scoffed. "Half of clan is terrified of you. You make the butcher's boy run crying. What was his name again?

"Hans?" suggested Valeria.

"No. That is cobbler's son. He's the first boy that ran screaming about you being a witch."

"Oh, yeah," Valeria chuckled as a wave of nostalgic memories hit her. "Let's be fair, he tried to get real handsy with me. So I made it harder for him."

"By turning all his fingers into snakes."

Valeria sighed happily.

"Which then started biting his other finger-snakes in battle for hand-dominance," continued Boris.

Her smile grew wider. "Those were the days."

With a fizzing whistle, Doom blinked back into existence, the space around him cracking back into place as spatial fractals uncracked and faded.

Boris nearly leaped out of his chair. " _Blya-_ I mean-Doctor." Boris stood up and snapped to a salute which changed halfway into a bow.

"Commander," said Doom, "I trust that Hassenstadt's defenders have long since broken rank and scattered."

"Looks to be the case, Doctor," said Boris, expanding the holo-map for Doom to see. "Not much resistance left. Do not blame them considering they have been getting ass-fuc-blasted. Blasted with lasers and robots. Yes." Boris cleared his throat.

A tinge of disappointment flashed through Doom's eyes. The current incarnation of Boris had his uses but his frequent use of profanity-and by extension, Valeria's-causes no small amount of dissonance. This would be another hobby he might consider cutting out of Boris' mind. Doing that too much could result in rapid mental degeneration. Best not to use technology to substitute what can be achieved through basic discipline."Very well. Continue your 'blasting'. Until the Baron surrenders himself, let all Latveria see the cost of tyranny."

"Affirmative," said Boris, zooming in on squads of fleeing soldiers and highlighted them to be picked off by some Doombots. Boris sighed. It just wasn't the same, fighting a war like this.

Dispelling her levitation magic, Valeria walked up to Doom with both hands on her hip, foot tapping the ground. She fixed Doom with a haughty stare as he did his best to ignore her. The tapping her foot proved to be unbearable.

"What now?"

"Did you kill him?"

"Of whom do you speak?"

An illusion wove itself into being by will of memory and light, reconstructing Doom's "visit" to the Baron's keep in vivid detail as shown through the HUD a distant Doombot. "Him. You're not the only one who was keeping watch over our dear friend the Baron."

Doom looked at her with curious eyes. "You hacked into one of my Doombots?" That was surprising. Or deceitful on her part. She had taken to sorcery admirably, progressing at a prodigious pace within his expectation. Yet, beyond her remarkable memory, her attitude and aptitude towards technology were lackluster and disappointing. Perhaps that was in her nature, considering she only held half his parentage. It made sense since his alternate-or is trans-universal the more accurate term-half-sister only received the hereditary gifts of sorcery belonging to his mother and none of the scientific inclinations of his father.

"Nope," said Valeria, cheerfully. "Just made a duplicate of the signal using a spell." Across her wrist sorcerous patterns overwritten universal force variable constants were defied. Reaching out with her will, she drew upon live combat feeds from Doombot optics, one final woven thread of spellwork on her index finger distorting light itself to create a mimicry of a holo-feed.

Doom found himself pleasantly impressed. Within a tinge of disappointment. "Good. But know this: we will need to address your deficiency in technology further when we finish with this sordid affair."

"Not looking forward to it. Now spill: is Vladimir dead? Because if he is-"

"He lives," Doom said. "I merely wanted to have a taste of the flavor of despair that festers within him."

"Huh. So how does despair flavor taste?"

"Exquisite," said Doom.

Valeria beamed. "Good. I'm looking forward to choking him to death." Pulling her hands apart, an eldritch whip sparked into being within her grip. "Personally."

"Uh, Doctor?" said Boris. "There is problem with castle."

"Elaborate," said Doom.

"You hear of story of boy and magic beanstalk," said Boris, bringing upon a holo-feed of the castle. "Well, it seems that Baron found inspiration."

The Baron's keep of Castle Hassenstadt was the first part of the structure to pierce the first layer of the clouds, sinews of sprawling writhing cilia-like tendrils spilled out from the grand balcony A stem of cancerous muscle stretched and grew from the bottom of the structure, lifting Castle Hassenstadt to heights rivaling the command ship. Bulging stalks of veins and sinews snapped, spewing viscera and putrid waste as the more growths sprouted free from the growths, each wound marked by scar tissue bearing qualities similar to that of a crystal. Doom narrowed his eyes. Even from a brief look, the crystalline scars looked to be of the same substance that afflicted the insides of the few Distorted when he opened them for an autopsy.

"Ok, that is just gross," said Valeria, gagging at the leaking pus-filled cysts that waterfalled acid along the stalks of tissue pushed through the bottom of the castle. "Doom, what did you do?"

"This is none of my doing, girl," said Doom. Reaching out with a scrying spell, Doom felt the echoes of something familiar. Something dreadful. Obsidian flames with a mind of its own. The palpable taste of brimstone. A chorus of agony that hemorrhaged in accompaniment of eldritch energy from the heart of the castle, where the throne room lay. "The touch of Hell is behind this."

"Hell?" asked Boris. "As in, where the devil lives?"

"Where _a_ devil lives." corrected Valeria. "I think. Probably more like a dimension overlord. Right, Doom."

He gave her no reply. Pairing his helmet's visual feed with that of a Doombot's, sending it on a flyover of the castle so he could get a better tactical understanding from a bird's eye view. He connected with the Doombot's optics, system pixels scanning the castle below for all anomalies. The display immediately marked the courtyard, covering in a coiling miasma of darkness, with a point of interest. The Doombot's sensors could not pierce the unnatural membrane of the shadows that guarded the innards of the castle.

Approaching for closer examination, the Doombot detected a pin-prick of light flashing from beyond the shadow, an indicator of rising heat growing, spiking at a preposterous rate.

A wave of hellfire struck the Doombot. The optics flickered with error as it attempted to disengage from its flyover. Its hull integrity map flared red; components melting. The link flickered and died. Doom saw nothing but black.

"Shit," muttered Valeria. A pillar of fire reached upwards towards the stars, extending past the atmosphere and burning still where the void of space met the breath of Earth.

From within the coiling miasma, a ruined figure baring pale semblance to a man emerged, darkness clinging to him like his robes once did, tumors of bleeding fire and bustle of crystal and ruin marring his body long past the point of disfigurement. Thin tendrils twitched, connected to his flesh as a single hateful eye glared at the ship in the distance, the beast sensing the presence of its prey, drawn to the conflux of technology and sorcery that was Doom.

 _ **"DOOM!"**_ The voice of Baron Vladimir Fortunov reverberated in a hellish echo the air itself rippled and tore, wounds forming in reality, gushing hellfire for an instant before scarring into crystalline tissue that began to rain on the land below. Crowning the Baron's head, a glooming wound between realms spreading wipe as the flesh between dimensions shattered.

"Commander," ordered Doom. "The debris."

Nothing more needed to be said. Sweeping his hands across the debris, a single order was relayed to ever Doombot in operation across Latveria. They broke from engagements and repair operations across the land, all pushing their thrusters to overdrive. A thousand missiles glimmered over Latveria's sky, surging to a single point where the sky wept fire and crystal upon the land.

This was how the Distorted where born then, a simple matter of exposure the substance of Hell that warped the body and the soul, serving as little more than a conduit for the energies of hell as their essence was slowly ripped away. Cold rage flooded

"No stain of hell shall defile this land," said Doom. "Now, and forevermore." He knew not how the Baron had managed to make a pact with Hell, which was the only possibility for the present circumstance. The Baron was no sorcerer, no mystic of any ability. That and the powers that he wielded did not so much wrap around him as it did spill from a single point within him, pumping through him as his ruined heart pulsed, the glowing organ glowing through his hide of cancerous growths. That was the point that needed to be staunched. The power flooding forth was akin to that of a sea spill upon virgin soil. It would keep flooding through, sustaining the Baron, and in return, itself.

" ** _DOOM! BEHOLD ME! I AM THE HARBINGER OF YOUR DESPAIR!"  
_**  
Valeria swallowed. "Lots of despair talk today. _Sulu_ time?"

"Go have your fun, girl," said Doom, as space itself fractured around him "But the Baron is mine." He disappeared.

Valeria gave the Baron's cancerous visage on the feeds a look and manifested her whip in comparison. "Gonna need a bigger whip to make this work."

...

Teleporting but ten meters before the Baron, Doom materialized in reality with his arms folded, judging the monstrosity of a man that now finally had a form to fit his heart.

The Baron's wretched figure loomed over him like a mountain. His flesh was now intertwined with the castle, tendrils that were strands of skin trapped through the cracks in the battlements, in the walls, through the very Earth beneath it. His torso was the only portion of his body that was free, his waist still attached to the darkness of the courtyard. A remaining eye, burning crimson in iris and blood vessels beneath, glowered with unspoken fury, dwarfing the man facing it.

" _ **Doom,"**_ boomed the Baron's, missing eye hemorrhaging ruinous energy from its socket. " _ **Finally, you reveal yourself. At last. I am going to peel that armor from your body and flay the flesh from your very bones. Your screams will be like music to me! Bring me the taste of satisfaction-"**_

Doom extended two fingers. Rocks fell upon the Baron's skull.

The Molecular Expander was a sophisticated weapon in design but blunt in implementation. Good for where there is a need for mass in any given situation. From his fingertips fired twin streams of particles that, when coming into contact with air, expanded into the size of boulders in a persistent stream. This created the first aerial landslide to be seen in Latveria. It would not be the last.

The flying landslide rained down against the cancerous mass that was the Baron's head, sharp edges cutting into the Baron's skull, weight pushing the rocks beneath deeper and deeper. The Baron wailed his cry a mixture of impotent fury and shuddering rage. " _ **DO-aggghh!"**_ Boulders tumbled down the wretched maw that now formed Vladimir's mouth, lips oozing glowing pus that trailed down his chin leaving burning fissures in his flesh. Regardless of the power granted to him, Vladimir Fortunov is, and will always be a fool.

"How does satisfaction taste, Vladimir?" asked Doom, cutting the flow of boulders as the last of the tonnage bounced off against the walls of the castle, crashing through weakened battlements as stone and dust rain down below.

The world grew pale in comparison to the darkness gathering in the Baron's socket.

A beam of hellfire melted the onrushing tide of boulders, cutting through them and falling upon Doom. Washing against his forcefields, Doom merely folded his arms as he faced the torrent, ignoring the cracks forming in his kine-shield. Given enough time, the blast would overwhelm his shielding without further warding or power diversion. But Doom had a theory, based upon what he had observed from the girl that Valeria faced using _Sulu_ all those weeks ago, and the few more Distorted that he came across.

That flesh was a poor conduit of extra-dimensional energies no matter how warped it got. He found himself proven right as the Baron cried out with rage, his missing socket weeping black tar down down a tumor-bulged cheek.

Growling with rage, Vladimir tracked Doom with his one good eye as he swallowed the rest of the stones down. " ** _I have traded my soul, usurper. Granted the Book of Hell my damnation to strike your and the wretched filth that you leave from my Latveria once and for all."  
_**  
"The Darkhold?" said Doom. The Book of Sins. The Book of Spells. Another divergence. No wonder the energy was so familiar, he had wielded its power before. But how did it end up in the hands of the Baron? And he speaks of a deal, which should be impossible since the enchantment of the Darkhold is one of overwhelming greed and avarice, of lust to possess it. Doom never remembered it having sapience of any conversable sort. Yet, another divergence perhaps.

The Baron prattled on.

 ** _"...by the rightful rule of the Fortunovs! Die!"_** finished Vladimir Fortunov while Doom. From within the was and windows, through every crack and opening, crystal-tipped tendrils with razor edges reached out to impale Doom. They cracked useless against Doom's kine-shield, splitting apart on impact. From the torn wounds, more tendrils spilled from, washing over Doom's shield and wrapping him in a coiling membrane of hellish growths and began to contract tighter and tigher against his shields. From his HUD, Doom noted his forcefield's integrity diminish slightly against the Baron's efforts.

An arc of ensorcelled power cut through the flesh-prison, shattering the flesh into tessellating fractals, separated not by wounds but by the fracturing of space itself.

 ** _"What!"  
_**  
Raising a single hand, Doom released a stream of plasma enwreathed in sorcery. The lancing energy cut a gaping hole through the Baron's skull, blasting the center of his skull apart in a clean cauterized cut. " _ **Kill you,"**_ gasped the Baron, as the beam traveled down towards his mouth. " ** _Kill yo-"_** The Baron's words died as Doom brought down another landslide of boulders, hindering the gap between the gaping wound that already began to sprout tumors growths to make itself whole again. Fibers of crystal and flesh carved impotently against the tones of stone that came down as a hammer against what was left of the split maw that was the Baron's head.

Pieces of coiling tendrils reached out from within the Baron, grasping for the other side, struggling to become whole again. The stones in their path delayed them but would not deny them. Chipping away, the process continued. But the goal had been achieved. Doom would have time to descend into the belly of the beast and quell its heart before it would rise again.

"Vladimir! Get ready for-whoa!" _Sulu_ slowed to a halt Valeria flew by, holding what looked to be miles and miles of steel wire in her hands. "Dammit. I'm late. Was looking forward to choking a big monster." She turned to Doom. "You broke your promise by the way."

"Hardly," said Doom. "Do you recall the _Warlock's Folly_?

"Homework recital? Now?"

"Yes."

Valeria sighed. " _'Magic is to be wielded by the sorcerer, the sorcerer not by the source. Power that corrupts is no power at all is the bane of the soul of the fool who wields it.'_ What about the folly?"

He looked at her, expecting her to know the answer. She gave the still hammering heart of the Baron a passing glance. _"_ Guess this means that you're going to have to take a walk into the belly of the beast."

"I will not be long," said Doom. "Amuse yourself however you wish in the meantime. Make sure the Baron stays in his current state."

Blasting off towards the heart of the Baron, Doom fired a lance of light cut through the darkness and growths that layered the beast's flesh before sinking in through the wound before it could heal.

Valeria gave the blooming flaps of flesh hanging loosely from the pile of rocks weighing upon the throat Baron a disgusted glance. "Gross."

Things were divergent. Again.

Doom's mood matched the darkness of the Baron's innards, his blasters cutting a path through the layers of distorted tissue and dimensional fissures.

There was no consistency here. No link. Valeria, Boris, Latveria were all recognizable, sensible despite the drastic alterations made to their state of being and existing narratives within the constants of this universe. Yet, it matched the ebb and flow. They had justifications to exist as they did in their current forms. Theories that he could work. A history. The Baron's new found curse and disfigurement held no such tether to reality or sense. By what power, what circumstance did the Vladimir find a path to power, even if it was at the cost of himself? The man was no sorcerer. He knew nothing of magic and even if he did, why hide it till now? Why not wield against the world? There was something missing here. The tapestry of this existence was incomplete.

And at the heart of this deformed amalgamation of castle and man, Doom would find the truth.

The final layer of flesh peeled away before Doom as he found himself sinking into a crudely cut pocket of reality. The membrane of flesh and existence closed behind him, fading into tides of crimson rivers, flowing through skies of brimstone and shadow, crossing in webs of veins that all converged at a single point.

The seed of the Baron's power, where Doom would find the patron that bequeathed him such power.

Through a vast and ever-reaching expanse, Doom flew. _Brother Sutrahamayana's Ever-Long Reach_ was a journeyman's hex. Its pattern was known to be far more complex than what a simple spatial distortion spell of its ilk but it worth the cost of its cast. Unlike the others of its category, it kept intruders at an ever-long distance, as the name would suggest. Changes acceleration vectors or sudden leaps by way of teleportation fed an intricate system in which the exact same amount of energy was drawn into to a mico-spell of ether conversion that would increase the distance based on the exact expenditure of the mover. As such, only those who could break the spell's pattern, or those that moved without spilling its cost into the real world would be able to overcome the stasis of distance.

To do the former would take hours that Doom didn't have, even if he abused what little functionality he managed to restore within his temporal circuits. The latter, on the other hand, was quite achievable with the activation of a single enchantment inscribed within his armor. Forming a triangle with his fingers, Doom's body split as he echoed through space while his prime body remained behind. Snapping back, the potential energy built up repulsed through his prime body, discharging through his armor's kinetic dampeners without any harm to him as the hex collapsed under the illogic.

Spells were like stories. True magic an imposition of narratives upon the laws of existence. Such was why the power of sorcery was undeniable, yet fickle. Should the tale of the teller be regarded with disbelief in its failure to maintain its pattern, then they were referred to as a liar. Likewise, a spell that could convince the universal canon that it was true would merely collapse in on itself and the caster misfire. In this regard, technology was far safer.

The membrane of extending space shattered before him. Doom shot through the miasma of dark that stood as the only shade other than the dark red of the veins. Though he had broken through the barriers that led to the center of the Baron's power, dark thoughts troubled him.

This was a pocket dimension but not of the norm. The mystical construction of this plane was but a ring in a series of three, overlapping with the other two, that of the physical world through the Baron and also Hell itself. Whoever created this multivariate channel held knowledge beyond the standard, even for a demon. Most creatures of Hell cared little for the vessels they inhabited thus, in their haste to complete the contract, often rendered forces of decay and destruction through the lacking bodies of mortals. A demon was not a creature of mere physicality. It inhabited the world in more ways than one, occupying dimensional vectors that simply did not exist within the broad universe's laws. As such, the human body could only stomach the bleeding power of Hell and the distortion for so long.

Which made pocket dimensions such as these a valuable commodity. In the last universe, dark sorcerers often found ways of making beneficial pacts with demons by creating these staging points for them in exchange for the ability to summon them or an artifact of interest. As a result, one of the few unspoken laws between sorcerers of the eldritch lores was deniable of all spatial altering magic. The only other creatures in the known universe that held prowess in such arts were Dormammu himself and his forces, who found more interest in the game of annexing and devouring portions of Hell.

As such, demons continued to make deal with humans, pacts for power and wealth. Should they ever gain complete mastery over the variable manipulation of Euclidean geometric constants, then the housing of human souls would find itself much less necessary than ever before.

Doom approached the crust of limpid red made a transparent shell, guarding what looked to be a single page of eldritch texts. Its familiar resonance sang to him, scratching at his mind, its nails scratching against the enchantments warded upon his helmet and woven into his armor as his HUD detected and reflected a psionic assault. Its song was known to him as it strums the strings of avarice that dwelled within the hearts of all that lived, urging them to possess it.

The Darkhold. A piece of it, but still the Darkhold unmistakable.

Hovering in the emptiness between him and the page, patterns sparked across Doom's palms as his armor played the recorded chant. Lens attended to scry into the ether that sorcery emitted with each cast, lines of kaleidoscopic fractals burst into sight as the dimension around him ignited with light. Lines of mystical power flowed with the as thousands of souls howled in agony, energy sating the Baron's transformation drawn from their flagging reservoirs personal energy. Before him, the faded contours of a figure at a glowing scar within lining the center of the page peered out at him from Hell. With a gesture, wards ignited from the figure's arm.

Doom's spell shattered like glass. Boosting back, Doom made some distance between himself and the adversary, the opening of its Hellgate spreading into sight.

" _What are you?"_ It asked. The voice was soft. Feminine but distorted, as if carried by a harsh wind.

"I could ask you the very same question," replied Doom.

The page hovered in silent judgment. " _A piece of the whole."_

 _"_ Lies. Lies unfit for an ignorant child."

The page fell silent. " _It matters not what you deny, mortal-"  
_  
"I deny nothing, demon. But do sense the presence of another across these thin walls of existence," said Doom. "I am no fool like the Baron and his ilk, no being of narrow insight. A sorcerer recognizes sorcery when its cast. This page is but a channel for you, an extension. You lie through it, deceive through it, but even the Darkhold complete holds no sentience of its own. For all its composition by all matter unholy, a book is a book and nothing more."

Dimension grew cold, the coursing blood of the Fortunov line split away from the page as the shell broke. Blood pooled behind Doom, coiling into a crimson leviathan of many heads that rose through tides of its own substance. The warping of flesh and forces. This was the proper power of Hell. Judging by the creature that grew from the blood, it seemed that the Hell of this dimension was also shackled to the unconscious whims of its host. Hydra's loyalty ran deep.

"Are you the one that formed the wards around this place, the spell of _Ever-Long Reach?"_

A soft chuckle came from the adversary. " _You know of the spell? Remarkable_. _What is your name, mortal? Your mask denies me the taste of your mind and I have the desire to put a name to conversation after your demise."  
_  
Power cracked between Doom's fingers as his armor began pre-preparing his first salvo of weapons and spells. "Death lays no hand upon Doom lest he wills it."

" _Doom,"_ said the voice. " _How fitting. You seek to seal me from my host, then?"  
_  
"Indubitably."

" _Then before we begin, I propose a trade,"_

 _"_ If you think that Doom is foolish enough to make a deal-"

" _No,"_ the adversary laughed. " _Not a deal. A conversation. You tell me how you have sealed your presence from this world so well that my powers cannot feel your soul beneath that shell of enchantment and titanium. In return, I'll return to you any knowledge that you find yourself lacking."  
_  
"All knowledge is owed to Doom. All knowledge will be Doom's in due time."

The adversary laughed, its voice ringing with joy. " _Such... temerity. Such... pride. Such..._ _ **impudence**_ _."  
_  
The hydra fell upon Doom, crashing against his shields in torrent tides red as the page teleported away.

...

"Shit," said Valeria, blasting Baron's rapidly regenerating skull. "Shit. Shit. Shit-shit-shit."

A pillar of hellfire spewed violently from the wound held open by the boulders, melting the rocks immediately. The pillar reached upwards, blasting through the dimensional rift that rained crystals and fire into the world, dissipating it like a bomb burst in fog. Coiling sinews joined together despite the blaze, as the Baron's mouth reformed in heartbeats. **_"DOOM!"_**  
 _  
Sulu's_ power reserves were dropping. She was hitting this thing with full intensity and barely did more than shave a few pieces of skin. Rearing his reformed skull back, single eye rolling out back into place, Baron Vladimir Fortunov drew a long and deep breath and bellowed with absolute agony.

"Valeria," she could hear her grandfather calling her where he body physically was. "You need to do something about the fucking monster."

"Trying! I need more firepower.

"Try harder," said Boris. "Because I think it's growing even larger."

He wasn't lying. The Hellfire that was only seen flowing through its veins was practically glowing now, flames licking forth from the tearing flesh that was expanding by the second.

Whatever Doom was doing it, he needed to stop because her little blaster was water shooter by this point. The rest of the Doombot's where still occupied with the debris. She needed something with more punch.

Something like the command ship.

"Grandpa," said Valeria, diving low as a stream of Hellfire cut inches over where she used to be. "Get on the sun-gun!"

"What?"

"The solar-cannon. The holo-station where I was at."

She heard him stumble beside her, cursing in Russian all the way. Tendrils came at her in a weaving net. Her cut flared as she swung in strokes of a cross. Burning limbs splattered against _Sulu's_ plate as she rose into the open air.

The Baron screamed. The stalks grew and tore. Behind her, the beast that was Vladimir Fortunov followed.

Spinning in a dodge roll as lances of hellfire cut across her, warnings filling her HUD as even the coolant within _Sulu_ began to boil, Valeria gritted her teeth. "Grandpa?"

"In position," said the old soldier. "Smile you ugly mother-"

Twin beams clashed over the Latveria sky, the brightness of the meeting energies casting shadows across the clouds, burning into existence like a second sun that could be seen across Latveria. Focused energies siphoned from the sun through super-science matched the roaring bellows of that shining black flame of hellfire. The titanium exterior on _Sulu_ began to melt, micro-inches of liquid metal washing from its frame as visual errors flickered through Valeria's failing HUD. With a primal cry that shook the world, the hellfire surged, open wounds spread from his socket to the rest of his face as the power burst loose to greater effect. The solar-beam flagged and quivered against the powers of Hell. For all the miraculous inventions of Doom, there was the single unfortunate fact that they weren't limitless in power.

Thankfully, the same could be said about the Baron's pain tolerance. Roar twisted into a shrill scream then a pathetic sob, the rush of hellfire spilled out its last streams as the Baron reached up to cover his blistered socket and torn skull. It was a poor choice as the solar-beam cut right down as the last of the hellfire used itself up.

Like a spear forged from the dew of dawn, the beam punched a resplendent hole through the hand of the Baron, continuing through its jaw and out from its back, before piercing through the base of the castle and slicing through the stem of the castle' stalk-like pillars of tissue. Light flooded back into Latveria through the clean exit wound beneath the castle, warm and proper, as it always was.

"Yes!" Valeria cried, as _Sulu_ pumped arms. One of which promptly snapped off as the last of the carbon fibers melted away. That was the hand with the blaster. Gripping her other fist, the cutter fizzed. She tried it again and this time it ignited. No big loss. "Great job, grandpa!"

Boris smirked. "This is nothing, one time in Staling-what's that sound? _"  
_  
"What?" The Valeria heard it, the snapping. The tearing. Echoing through the air as it punctuated the Baron's screaming. The castle's weight had shifted too much, and by cutting through much of its supporting structure, the Baron was beginning to topple. Like the giant in the tale. "Oh, _fuck_ me!"

The castle tilted. The few remaining stalks strained. Then snapped. Blood spilled into the open air as the stalks attempted to heal but the weight was too much. The remains of the parted stalks winnowed away into the wind as motes of ash, severed from its point of power. With a final howl, the Baron tore away from his base as gravity took hold of him. Flailing in the air, the city of Hassenstadt lay far below. At this velocity, and judging from his fortitude, the Baron would likely survive the impact after a respite of healing.

The people that still lived within Hassenstadt would not.

" _Power at 13 percent,"_ relayed _Sulu._ It didn't matter now. Sending her thrusters into overdrive, Valeria dove immediately after.

The altimeter in her HUD told her that she was still 21,000 meters from the ground. That gave her some time to think. Speeding past the screaming Baron, Valeria positioned herself beneath the stone battlements of the side of the castle that was facing the rapidly approaching Earth. Suddenly changing directions, Valeria winced as she anticipated the effort that it would take for _Sulu_ to hold up the castle. Instead, her HUD flickered and one of her optics went out. Rocks and debris spilled across her vision. Dust and flesh mingled as she found herself sinking into flesh, sinews of tumor cocooning her as it began to mend.

Valeria felt like slapping herself. Of course, this would happen. _Sulu_ can't hold up the entire castle by itself even if it had all the power in the universe. And the weakened battlements were a terrible point to put all that force on, to begin with. All that force focused on one point made her sink into its flesh like a bullet

Lighting her plasma cutter, Valeria pulled an arm loose as she began to cut. From where she entered, she left, tendrils of flesh still reaching for her.

Blasting out from the crumbling battlements Valeria saw an oncoming tide of Doombots, freed from their task of clearing the falling crystals. "Yes!"

A wave of hellfire promptly cutdown at them while warping tendrils sliced at the others. "Shit." Something pierced through the underside of her armor, coiling within the guts of _Sulu_. "Shit!" The armor integrity of her chest went into the red as the light of her core shone from the rents that the tendrils made. Drawing her up towards, the Baron chuckled darkly as he gave the still distant land before glance. " ** _Why do you struggle, little machine? For what purpose?"_**

"What kind of stupid question is that, asshole," said Valeria, struggling with the tendrils. "If you hit the ground, thousands will die."

" ** _Then die they shall! Their lives were mine to begin with! As is yours! I am the Baron of Latveria! You swear existence to me! So long as I live, Latveria lives! So watch, watch as I rise from the ruins anew! As a titan! No. A god!"  
_**  
Valeria thought she knew hate when she faced the Baron's forces when they took her people and forced her from her home, when they tortured her grandfather, beat her and mocked her while she was starving in the streets, when she was forced to put down another girl her own age for an undeserved fate. She was wrong. If she took every last ounce of hate she had built up across her life, it still wouldn't have come close to matching how much she hated the Baron in this instant of time. Here was the rapist of her home, masquerading as its ruler even these last moments of power-addled insanity. If she didn't stop him now, then what daughter of Latveria would she be? What would Doom say to her?

Wait. What would Doom do?

 _Probably build a bullshit gun powered by a bullshit spell that shoots black holes due to zepto-gravitational particles altering the state of mass within the universe or something like that,_ thought Valeria. _Yeah, that's probably right. Problem is, I don't know how to make a bullshit gun. So. What can I do."  
_  
Well. Doom always told her to start with what she knew. She was pretty good with magic but casting any spell through _Sulu_ as it rapidly shifted in correspondence-wait.

What if she tried to astral project while still neurally linked to _Sulu?_ She never tried that before. "No time like the present I guess."

"What?" asked Boris. His granddaughter promptly slumped over. "Valeria?"

Mind zipping through the neural link, Valeria's astral form whooped as she slammed into the body of _Sulu._ Seeing the world through a dichotomous sight of astral auras and high tech combat optics, Valeria entered her war machine.

A ghost in the shell. She ignited her plasma cutter, act happening on instinct, without even the need for thought. "Oh, this is going to be so much fucking fun," said Valeria, the distortion of the Doombot no longer carrying into her voice. "Vlady, you think your brain is still human?"

" ** _What?"  
_**  
"Let's find out," reaching her remaining hand forward, sorcery flowed from her body to her soul, filling _Sulu_ with patterns of spellwork. Uttering the words to _Fezzik's Lapse,_ she touched her middle finger with her thumb as the spell burst into effect.

The Baron's eye flickered out of focus, trapped in a mental loop for an additional five seconds as the electrical impulses within his mind twined itself. The tendrils limpened as the Baron's mouth fell open.

"Part one done. Now, what's part two?" She looked down at her chest, titanium armor half melted, fusion core glowing through the rents. "Huh. Just might work."

Thrust blast her forward, she split the guts of the Baron open as she sank into him, slicing deeper and deeper as she felt her astral form gag. "Gonna need to ask Doom if there something like a soul bath."

Vladimir's rumbling cackles shook the interior of the castle as the hallways grew tighter and tighter, cancerous flesh squeezing what little space _Sulu_ could make with its plasma cutter away bit by bit. The spell must have worn off now. She could feel him contracting with laughter. " **You're inside me now! Nowhere to run."**

 **"** Not running asshole," said Valeria. Baron probably didn't hear that. Didn't matter. It was for her. "Alright," she said. "I'm deep enough."

Igniting her plasma blade, she detached her astral form from within the shell of the Doombot. She felt her insides twist into knots. Arm missing, an optical lens shattered, jagged rents across the shell, and a fusion core that was beginning to flicker. This was it. It was just a machine. Another could always be made.

But she knew that she was going to miss her first. Reach out with a spectral hand, her fingers sank through the half-melted face that was _Sulu._ "Thanks for the ride, Captain. It's been fun." A slight mirth poked its head through the bittersweet ocean. "Setting phasers to blow."

 ** _"Come out child-come out and face your deat-"_**

Snapping her projection back into her own body, she gave the final order _Sulu_ would ever receive.

The plasma cutter sank through the thinned plate of titanium without resistance. The tip of the blade broke that mystical vacuum that held the highly destructive elements within in equilibrium, exposing it to the rest of the world. The light went out of _Sulu's_ remaining optic as the signal was lost. Static lines filled her eyes and ears. From below, she could feel the rumbles of an explosion.

Pulling the visor from her head Valeria ran across the interior of the command ship, ignoring her grandfather's suddenly as he stumbled back from checking her comatose body. A flash sparked from below, washing out through every pore, every wound in castle and Baron. A wave of force rippled over Latveria, a flash of light disintegrating all the cancerous flesh that composed the Baron other than his stilled heart, still falling from the sky, sealed away from the physical dimension by wards unfathomable.

Valeria pumped her fist in the air. "That's right you insolent feckless _sack of shit!_ Know that it was Valeria of clan _fucking_ Zefiro that turned your soul to ash." She let out a breath. "Man, that was satisfying." Her smile suddenly faded. _Doom_. "Oh fuck. He was still inside. He is going to be so pissed when he gets out of that."

 _If he survived._ Valeria ignored the intrusive thought. He was Doom. Of course, he was going to survive.

Far below, the former Baron's dead heart continued to fall. And glow.

There was a fight that had yet to conclude.

...

Grand spectral blades bifurcated the hydra into twin streams, swinging to the will of Doom as he beheaded another three heads that dared to transgress upon him.

" _Grannassa's Bladesong,"_ said the Adversary. " _A wise choice. Tethering the blades to your personal energies frees the mind to focus on a counter-attack."  
_  
The adversary grasped his intent but not his execution. As he finished empowering his mico-bombs within his gauntlets, his blades cracking before the battering power of a thousand Hydra maws clamping down against its edges, Doom broke the _Bladesong,_ a ripple of power splattering the Hydra, giving him a moment to scattered the bombs.

The mico-explosives sank into the crimson tides and expanded, blasting into the world at hyper-cooled temperatures that began to freeze the rapidly reforming hydra. White danced across the red, ice frosting over the seas of blood, freezing the last head solid, jaws but inches from clamping shut on Doom.

" _Impressive,"_ said the Adversary as Doom teleported before the page against, weaving a spell of demonic expulsion in one hand and a reality mending spell with his other. " _I must admit, I find myself fascinated by your mixing of science and magic. The latter of which I find myself... intimately familiar with. Tell me, who trained you?"  
_  
"Be silent, demon," said Doom mustering his will. "This farce has lasted too long. I must be rid of you."

The Adversary hummed. " _If it were only so easy."_ From beyond, there was the static crackling of spatial-based teleportation.

 _The demon escaped on its own accord,_ thought Doom. _It matters little. It was wise to flee from Doom. Soon I will-_

An ensorcelled bolt of power struck Doom from behind, kine-shields flashing into existence. The Viridescent blast splashed against his shields as thin cracks spread across its first layer. Integrity at 81 percent, HUD indicated. Doom broke from his spells as he turned to face his foe, its presence suddenly palpable to him in this pocket of existence.

It stood before him, a tall, thin creature, magnificent plates of gleaming obsidian armor almost mirroring his own in design, runes of disparate tongues of sorcery and magic carved in litanies of power across every inch of its frame. Matching his hood of green, the adversary adorned itself with leather tanned from human flesh with the souls still woven in, faces of the victims lost in a frozen scream from all eternity. Beneath the hood, a pool of shapeless midnight reflected his own eyes, glowing green with sorcerous might.

 _"_ Armor?" said Doom, as his suspicion begin to build. "You are no demon, are you? Even a demon would not be so arrogant as to leave the plane of Hell that grants them an endless pool of power. You have your origins else, don't you creature?"

"Perceptive and knowledgeable _,"_ the Adversary laughed, voice sounding entirely human, no longer distorted by the Hellgate. The creature sounded familiar, soothing in some uncanny manner. Doom's mind raced at the pace of supercomputer preparing spells and actions in sequences to come. A lance of hellfire manifested in her hands. "Shall we begin then, Doom. I've grown weary of watching and it's been far too long since I've played with competent prey. Match me, if you can."

Matching its summoned weapon with an eldritch blade of his own, sparking with arcing power Doom engaged the duel.

Teleporting behind the Adversary, his swing was deflected by an off-hand parry that he carried into a slash. It clashed against his foes block as it drove forth, treating this little duel as if it was a little game between them. Its blade of fire was thin and curved, swung with flicks of the wrist, blade often held high like a polish saber. Playing the opposite, Doom lowered his blade in the fool's guard, daring it to engage him, watching his opponent for any mistake.

It came at him again, fire splitting off from the blade as he fired a blast of plasma. It flashed out of existence before the blast could hit.

Teleportation.

Doom turned as the firey blade clashed against his own.

"Shameful," it said, mockingly, "I thought we were fighting with honor."

"Honor means nothing to a creature of Hell," said Doom. "I would not cripple myself to face you in such a naive manner."

"Cynical," it said. "But quite correct."

It teleported again, just as a blast of hellfire came surging. The blast slammed into Doom's shield, giving him no moment of respite. He could feel the heat even through his armor, sigils of eldritch power focusing the full might of the arcane orb that warped fire in this dimension. His armor wailed in alarm as his kine-shield's integrity fell into the red, prompting him to cast a quick shielding cantrip to hold against the blast. Focusing his efforts on creating a two-loop portal to destabilize the spell-woven sun, Doom redirected the blast back into the orb as it overloaded on its own power, popping apart.

The Adversary rematerialized above him, blade curving down.

Doom held on a single hand without looking, ring-finger touching his thumb. Blade shattered upon ward as Doom then pointed a finger a fired ionic beam right in the face of his foe. Who responded by opening its own two-loop portal back at Doom who did the same thing.

Lines of power criss-cross through the room as portals opened countering portals countering portals. Breaking engagement simultaneously, they both teleported at the same time flashing to opposite sides of the expanse.

Crying the same words in unison, crimson bands coiled from both their hands as they arcs and clashed between them. Bursts of force and magic washed over both of them, as they matched wills, bands battling for dominance as the expanse between them flashed with power.

"Masterful," said the Adversary, runes flashing across its body as its power surged. "I would expect this from the Ancient One, and the other Sorcerer Supremes before her, but _you?_ An unknown? A surprise? You have little clue how much more delightful you have made my existence." Contracting the space between them with a pulling gesture, the Adversary fell upon Doom anew.

He caught it downwards swing before it could fall, servos of his armor protesting against its armor's glowing runes that wailed in respond. Their free hands slammed together as their power mixed and grew between their palms. A stasis enveloped them both as their spells merged and broke lose. Froze in body but not in mind, Doom wasted no time and broke away into his astral form. Strange had bested him in a competition this way once. Perhaps he could recreate the desired effect with the pace of his mind and the speed of his thought.

Surging loose from his body, Doom's mind made for the page as he sought to cast the expulsion spell, patterns forming with his words, incantation speeding towards ultimate completion.

A piercing agony cut through Doom's chest.

"Mistake," said the Adversary, twisted the fractal blade it formed deeper into Doom's astral form. The armor clung to his foe's form still, even in the astral-runes had bound themselves to his opponent's soul. "You thought that I would not follow you out? That I would just wait with you in stasis? Your mind is fast, but speed only grants you so much." Twisting the blade, Doom bit back a cry of agony as he cast out an ether blast at his foe. The Adversary merely dissipated and reformed. "Ah. I see. I've found the limit of your prodigious mastery, then. It makes sense now, if I am to consider it. The armor. The science. One must hold on some semblance of the material to make sense of that, don't they?" It flourished its blade and fell upon him.

The astral plane was a lost battle. Doom snapped back into his own body, astral wound fading from his mind as he fell back into his flesh beneath the enchantments of his armor. Lightning surge through his gauntlets into the Adversary as the runes of its armor flared to absorb the energy.

Beneath his helmet, Doom smirked.

Voltage suddenly stopping to a halt, Doom reached into the open pathway of the runes that were absorbing his electricity and held the ley-lines that formed the circuits of power within the armor and tore with all his power, spells bleeding from his armor into his foe's as he enhanced his discharge of sorcery through his technology. Overloading with concentrated energy, the circuits across the Adversary's right arm crackled and faded.

"How-"

Doom withdrew a hand, force-field wrapping around it as he surrounded it with another spell, prismatic shell of gravitationally charged force building with his hand. The blow hit his foe in the right shoulder with surgical accuracy before it could respond. Without properly flowing power going through its runes, the force when directly into foes as the armor of the Adversary cracked like an egg-shell. It tumbled back into the dark, twisting and turning as it tumbled through and portal that led right back to Doom.

Grasping its face in a gauntlet, Doom enwreathed his adversary in a force-field as he began weaving the spell of expulsion while he began to squeeze. It began to laugh softly, voice betraying no indication of injury even as the field tightened. "Well fought. I never expected my armor to become my downfall. Perhaps I was too parochial when I rejected the potential of technology. Sorcery is so intoxicating, but leaves you crippled when it fails you."

"Be silent," said Doom, as he increased power to his force-fields "I will be done with this farce."

As if moving through water, the Adversary broke free of his power as it laid a hand upon his gauntlet. "Agreed."

The Hellgate tore open at the center of the page again, its power filling the Adversary who detonated with the force of a miniature sun. Doom felt his shields break and his armor fold around him, cracking three of his ribs. The breath went right out of him as he was sent tumbling into the black, falling into the void as his armor shuddered and fell silent. Into a soft embrace did he land, cradled and supported by arms of his foe, holding him in a motherly fashion. He glared at the foe, eyes unyielding, undone.

"Oh," it chuckled. "I see. You still don't believe you've lost yet, have you?" Caressing his helmet with a hand, Doom felt a terrible cold dance across his cheek. Its fingers cracked through the titanium alloy as if it was but glass, sinking into the cleft of a reopened scar as he hissed in agony. Piecing pain lanced through his mind but clashed against his indomitable will, a tide of midnight ocean crashing against the face of a mountain. The Adversary sighed. "It's as if there is no difference. What manner of man are you, to hold will such as this. Reveal yourself to me. I'll even make it an even exchange."

The pool of midnight black parted from its face, spilling away like the rain washed away filth.

The glare faded from Doom's eyes, now widening in terror. His unbreakable will slackened as she sank her mind into his.

"No," Victor whispered, eyes growing wide in disbelief as he beheld her in her face. A spike of pain in his skull told him that she was driving sinking her sight into the borders of his mind. It felt like a dream happening while he was awake. He was a child again, telling her stories that he made up as he nested in her arms. She looked exactly how he remembered her. Skin of ivory, hair of midnight, and most of all, her hands. Her hands that held the very coldness of winter beneath her skin. Beside the fire, his father sat, watching them with a smile as the smell of medicinal herbs fumigated into the air. She rocked him back and forth, singing him lullabies in tongues that no being in existence other spoke, the words drowning his thoughts as the repeated, and repeated, and repeated. Cold and familiar, just like he remembered the touch of her palm to be back when he was but a child.

A sweet sad smile spread across the face of Cynthia Werber, her eyes glittering with the powers of Hell itself. "You poor child. Or should I say, _my_ poor child? But that wouldn't be entirely accurate either, would it, Victor dearest? It's been hard for you. So hard. Fade then. Fade into me. Join the chorus. You will never need to suffer again."

The lullaby grew louder, drowning away his thoughts, drowning in her mind.

It was dark there. Lonely. Like his memories while he was waiting to be born. Through the darkness, as Victor lost himself, a single word echoed from the very confines of his soul.

" _Be better."_

"No!" Victor whimpered. _No._ Came a whisper from the back of his mind, echoing louder and louder as the boy fell and the mother he loved bled and died, alone in the woods. The woman holding him wasn't her. She was gone. He had saved her from hell. Doom had faced Mephisto to save her. _Doom._ Not Victor. _**Doom.**_

Will hardening into adamantium, the mind spell broke apart like a shard of glass. Armor coming back online as if by his will alone, Doom blasted his alternate mother with all that he had left. Taken aback by his sudden recovery, she was launched back through the Hellgate in the page. Rising up with a spell cracking down from his closed fists, Doom's eyes bleed power and fury masking the terror that was Victor behind an armor of pride and wounded arrogance. Gripping the tapestry of existence tight, Doom slammed the wound shut as she rose, watching him as the Legions of Hell came to tend to her.

Crimson filled her eyes as she sent him one final smile. "Send Valeria my love. We'll see each other again. Sooner than you would hope."

The gate crashed cut, jagged fractals of reality snapping back into place. The page quivered and fell, the words still eldritch, but no longer empowered.

Collapsing to his knees, Doom let out a shaky breath as the wind began to whistle and the crimson skies gave way to overcast skies.

For a long while, he just knelt there as the enchantments of his armor did its best to mend its wounded spirit and sundered mind.

Cynthia Werber.

Cynthia Von Doom.

The echo of his mother.

Valeria's mother.

Was she a servant of Hell?

The master of it?

What fresh nightmare was this?

"Doom!"

He barely heard her voice, echoing through the thick layer of thoughts that dulled his mind with frost. "Who?"

"Doo-" Valeria stumbled to halt, place a hand on her mouth. Her eyes widened as she looked at Doom's face with mild discomfort.

"You're bleeding," said Valeria, pointing at his cheek, choosing not to mention how battered his armor looked.

Doom touched his cheek, where the single scar was. Blood stained his fingers. It felt nothing but cold. "So I am."

"Wait," said Valeria, brow knitting together in focus. Reaching out with fingers as she muttered silent words under her breath, Doom felt a warmth flood back into his face, the familiar sensation of pain breaking him from his battle-induced stupor. The spell hastened the clotting of his wound, scar tissue forming in seconds, returning him to his original state of imperfect. He touched his cheek and felt the hardened layer of flesh beneath it.

"Well done," said Doom, absent-mindedly.

She gave him an inscrutable look.

"What?" he asked.

"That's the first time you ever complimented me. Are you sure you're okay?"

Doom blinked. He considered telling her the truth right now. All of it. Who he was. About her mother. She looked up at him, grey eyes wide with yet untarnished life. No. He would not breathe the name of his mother-no-Cynthia Werber, to Valeria until he knew exactly what she was and her place in this world.

Ignoring the spiking pain in his ribs as he moved, Doom looked around. He stood amid a vast crater, the page of the Darkhold on the ground. This was where the castle used to be. "The Baron?"

"I suicide-nuked him with _Sulu,"_ said Valeria.

"What?" he said. "While I was still inside?" Doom said, incredulity creeping back into his voice.

"Well, I felt bad about it," Valeria replied, trying to plead her case.

Doom frowned. "He is dead then?"

"Yep."

"You are certain?"

"You're the only piece of him that made it. Well, the thing you were trapped inside anyway."

"Valeria," cried Boris, walking down the edges of the crater. "Docto-" He did a double-take a sight of Doom. "Where is fucking mask?"

The very worlds made Doom's mind feel bare. The feeling of her fingers lingered yet, reaching into his scar as he tore into him, the cold spreading.

Boris examined him closely. "You look too pretty."

"Too pretty?" said Doom, the sensation still lingering but his mind distracted.

"Yes," said Boris. "Too pretty to be powerful leader. Where is mask?"

"Grandpa, what is the bi-"

"People look at mask and man in armor, they see Doom: great and powerful leader of Latveria," explained Boris. "Broken mask and battered armor: impressive man but capable of losing. Not great leader. Can you fix?"

"I will require a moment," said Doom, casting a spell to un-dent his armor to presentable capacity. His kine-shields took the brunt of the damage in the fight. Still, this armor will need to go through drastic repairs. Not to mention his shattered mass, scattered to him now like dust to the wind. Waving a hand across his face, a glamor that formed an illusion resembling his mask flashed on his face.

Valeria leaned in looking at him with concern as the glamor flickered. "Will it hold."

"You doubt me," said Doom, some steel returning to his voice.

"Nope," she said. "Just wondering if you needed any help."

He gave a soft chuckle. "Doom... needs space."

They backed away.

He rose into the air, tentatively testing out his thrusters at first before rising into the air. Projecting his image into the sky as a hologram, his armor fizzled as it held on in spite of the strain. Doom cast all stray thoughts of darkness as he watched the people of Hassenstadt emerge from their houses, his soldiers within the city walls, all gathered together, looking up at him.

No matter what was to come on the horizon, today, at the very least, he had Latveria.

"Latveria," he said, his holo-image flashing over ever village, town, and city in the nation, "the Baron is dead. Your liberation... **has come!"  
**

_**ARC  
PRODIGAL SON  
END  
**_ **  
...**

 _A/N: Well. That's it. There's the prologue for you. Astute readers and watchers of the MCU would know this but the Darkhold doesn't really talk to people. It allows you powers and helps you build things but its main function isn't sentience but greed. Baron goes Tetsuo and has moment that I totally didn't steal from Dark Souls. Momma Cynthia rears her head for the first time ever-and boy do you believe that I have big, big plans for her. 10, 000 words. Holy shit I spent a long time writing and reworking this. Well. Let me know if you like or hate or want me to go swim in a trash fire._

 _Meanwhile, stay tuned for the interludes setting up the next arc,_ _ **Winter's End.**_ _Doom and company are still taking center stage but Agent Carter, Captain Rogers, and many, many more people-some I daresay, entirely unexpected-have an important role to play in the coming adventures that will detail the rise of Latveria to superpowerdom._

 _As a gift for being such gracious readers, here's a very, very tiny omake to end this arc on a bright note._

 _..._

"Hey, that's bullshit, K-oyba, you can't summon monsters when it isn't your turn. It's against the rules."

"Screw the rules, I have... wait, I don't think this thing is one of mine." Seto Kaiba frowned. The tin golem currently rising groggily from the spontaneously formed carter in the ground didn't look much like a dragon.

"Hey, weird metal guy," said Kaiba, "did I summon you?"

Doom rose from the ground. Where was he? Who where these people? Why did that boy's hair look like a Vietnamese spike-trap "None may command Do-"

"Whatever," interrupted Joey Wheeler, "if yous' ain'ts in the game, yous' gots' to get off the field."

Doom could scarcely understand the butchery of language. "None man command-"

"I summon you, Blue-Eyes White Dragon!"

"K-oyba! That's against the rules."

A blue eyes white dragon promptly formed from an extended card, manifesting in defiance of the conservation of mass and all things sensible. Even with his sorcery, he would not detect from where the beast came.

"You can summon monsters..." said Doom, "... with cards?"

Kaiba-the one that Doom now noted as the mental invalid who thought it was good idea to wear belts on his arms-looked at him as a bastard would an idiot. "Well, how else would it work?"

"Like this," Doom opened a portal and unspeakable horrors flooded out and began doing unspeakable things to the one they called Wheeler.

"Guys help," cried Joey.

"Just believe in the heart of the cards," came a shrill voice.

"Huh, pretty neat," said Kaiba. "If I give you a bunch of money will you show me how to do that?"

"Add in your tarot summons and perhaps we may begin discussing terms."

...

 _Years later..._

"Reed," said Susan Storm, watching her husband look out at the distance of space. "Come back to bed. It's late."

"I don't know Susan," said Reed. "I feel...something coming. I feel _him_ coming."

She hugged him from behind. "You defeated him. He's gone. You wiped his mind of all evi-"

"FOOLISH RICHARDS!"

Reed's blood froze solid. Sue's mouth fell open. Their ship stopped dead as a field of pure force held them still.

"My god," said Mr. Fantastic.

"YOU HAVE ACTIVATED MY TRAP CARD!"

Ripping through the dimensional barrier was a blue-eyed dragon of bone white, roaring in bestial fury as Doom stood atop its head, pointy hairs point from beneath his green hood, fusion powered card deck oozing with sorcerous energy, a strange puzzle piece dangling from his neck. "I HAVE CLAIMED WORLDS! FACED PHARAOHS TO CLAIM THE WISDOM THAT IS THE HEART OF THE CARDS!" From beyond the dimensional barrier, Doombots rode out on rocket-powered motorcycles with card decks of their own."AND NOW, ACCURSED RICHARDS, IT IS TIME... TO D-D-D-DUEL!"

Reed blinked. "What?"

And so it came to be that the multiverse was conquered by a man who got really good at playing a children's card game.


	10. Interlude: Winter 2-01

**INTERLUDE:  
WINTER  
**  
 _2.01_  
Through windows overlooking the scintillating beauty of the cosmos, from light years away, Heimdall, the Gatekeeper, the Protector of the Bifrost found his omnisenses denied from a single point in existence. While such occurrences happened before, they always preluded war, the enemies of Asgard, or even that of existence, denying his near all-seeing eyes proper insight to developments below. Orange eyes narrowed as the Gatekeeper of the Bifrost continued to peer into that blurred mist that dotted upon the face of Midgard; a single spot on the European continent was wreathed thick fog. The nation that called itself Latveria obscured itself from sight, firing boiling and lighting the darkness below as forces swirled and the dulled cries of war came to him as if he were listening underwater.

Across the border he noted neighbors pointing and gasping at a second dawn across the horizon, the brightness reflected on their faces. Across the divide of seas, those in power rushed into small rooms as they discussed missing spies and sudden reports of powerful detonations over Europe's upper atmosphere. "Is it nuclear," came a synchronized question, greeting Heimdall with their unified concerns of a great war looming on the horizon. Scurrying to confirm their sources and verify the recountings, both sides of this cold war held themselves in place, waiting to see if the other would act first. All eyes began to fall on Latveria, as the fog seeped out further before finding a hard stop at the border.

Casting a glance on a man's spectacles, Heimdall could see the reflection of vast obsidian battlements that formed a barrier to the outside world in rising serried rows.

Gripping his blade, Hofund, Heimdall removed it from its slot on its pedestal with an echoing click. Sheathing the blade across his shoulder, he left the observatory, the rounded mechanisms all around him grinding to a halt as the room felt dormant. Turning to leave, the guards flung open grand doors leading to the radiant and voluminous path that was the Bifrost Bridge. "Seal the observatory. None shall traverse the Bifrost in my absence. Let none enter."

They saluted him with discipline, without hesitation. They would stay here on guard, unquestioning. Such was the loyalty of Asgardian, dutiful beyond measure.

For the first time in centuries, Heimdall parted from his station of duty as he ventured towards the city alone to speak before the throne of the Allfather, Odin. A messenger could not bear the importance, the gravity of such an event. This was his burden to bear.

He alone was the watcher.

He alone was the protector. ...  
"And I swear to you father, you would have cried tears of laughter if you could have seen the face on the Kronan ambassador when he saw Loki sailing head-first towards him."

A rapidly fading welt sat atop Loki's skull, pushing his hair out of place as he held a pleasant smile on his face. A roar of laughter rose through the throne room, echoing across the boundless chamber that chronicled the glories of Asgard, from the runic script carved on the columns that supported the palace, to the frescos on the ceiling depicting all nine realms through places and peoples, to the thousands of thanes and warriors that gathered before the brilliant steps rising to the grand throne of Odin, forged from purest gold with twin wyrms rising from the sides to face each other in challenge above the throne.

All told of glory and honor. All sang of the place of Asgard as the realm above all.

"I am certain I would," said Odin, fixing his eldest with a writhing stare. Thor stood before him clueless to his displeasure, proud grin on a chiseled face unwavering, his long golden hair still hiding specks of rock as he spun his hammer vivaciously. "Remind me, did I send you to _smash_ the Kronan delegation with your hammer, or address them using diplomacy? It seems, by your actions, that I might have misspoken."

Now Loki was fighting back a grin of his own, the pleasure of schadenfreude filling him with warmth. His eyes darted to his side as stolen a glance of his brother's unraveling expression, falling from pride to embarrassment as the thanes turned their laughter upon him. "Father, we tried-"

"I did not ask for an excuse, son," said Odin, words coming down as a hammer, level and heard with every droplet of his intent directed towards his eldest. Thor sulked back slightly.

"You asked that I conduct my self with diplomacy. As a future king of Asgard should."

"Aye," said Odin. "And it seems that day has yet to come by centuries."

For all his desire to see Thor brought low, there was no purpose for this. A sullen Thor was a grumpy Thor was a Thor that was far less pliable when he needed him to be. And now, watching that that expression of joy fade from his eyes as the tension built, he was going to be that Thor.

Loki cleared his throat. "Father. If I may make an interjection on the behalf of my brother?"

An eyebrow rose above Odin's lone eye. "You may."

"Contrary to the way my brother told the tale," said Loki, turning to address the warriors gathered, "he was not the one who started the brawl. No. My brother was honor bound to defend the honor of our dearly departed grandfather as the Kronans lobbed insult after insult at his name." He could see Thor giving him a suspicious frown as he continued to spin his lie. The truth was that one of the Kronans had mocked Thor for his size and Thor, being Thor, broke him apart by the waist and returned the favor. Which was when the fighting broke. "My brother, though infuriated, demonstrated restraint, for once, and demanded nothing but an apology in exchange for clemency. But the Kronans," Loki grinned as he pointed to his welt, "were quite _hard-headed_ regarding their beliefs."

Slight mirth mingled with disbelief on Odin's face. For a while, Odin sat in silence, a single hand placed upon his head. His body started shaking. Whispers went up among the Asgardians gathered as to what was happening to the Allfather. Then it came, a laugh, clear and hearty followed by many, many more. Like a cascading current his voice inspired the rest of his subjects to follow as the atmosphere broke entirely.

Thor fixed Loki with a grin. "Thank you, brother."

Loki rolled his eyes. "Hardly the first time I had to save you. Won't be the last either."

Thor punched him in the shoulder playfully.

Loki held it painfully.

By now Odin's laughter had subsided to a more manageable degree. "It seems that my sons are a united front on this. A rare occurrence. One worthy of drink!" A cheer rose through the gathered. "I declare this session adjorn-"

"My lord," came a voice, interrupting Odin. Gasps of disbelief and second-hand shame spilled from the room as the crowds made a path for Heimdall, approaching with sword across back and purposeful stride. "I bring you tides of note that cannot be delayed."

"Speak then, Protector," said Odin, expression of joy banished from his face. "If you have left your post to report this tiding in person, then it must be one worth hearing."

Kneeling before the Allfather as he expressed his reverence, Heimdall rose and recounted the happenings on Midgard in vivid detail. The court fell silent as Loki found his interest piqued. He had experimented with the limits of the Protector's sight in his own time. Each time had ended in failure but he knew that he was drawing close. For something such as this to be happening on Midgard could prove to be a fortune to him yet. It may just cut the amount of scheming he needed to put into plot to escape from the watchful glare of his father's watchdog.

Thor, on the other hand, was interested for another reason; as hushed whispers rose when Heimdall recounted the fires beneath the fought spilling new light on the horizon, Thor felt his thrill for battle rise alongside them. He gripped his hammer tightly and smirked. The feasts could wait. It had been a few centuries since he had been back to Midgard.

"And this fog," Odin responded after a moment of reflection, "you cannot see through it."

"Only the dullest of contours, my lord. Shades and shapes. Nothing more. Whatever this is, its magic is enough to deny my sight indefinitely and I fear it may yet spread further."

Odin sat, musing over Heimdall's words as one would an oncoming storm. "These words you speak are troubling indeed. Something that even defies even the eyes of omniscience is not something that Asgard can ignore. Only once before have I heard a similar tale as this. When my father, Bor, faced the Dark Elves." All whispers hushed. Thor's heart sank with potential battles that would become legend. An eyebrow lifted Loki's welt. "And that was a war that lasted centuries, costing endless lives and countless sacrifices." Odin felt silent, his single eye staring off into the distance. "Yet, I would not have us reveal ourselves to the Midgardians again in such a time before they are ready. I sense that will require might and guile in each measure to quell the source of this fog." Odin's eyes fell upon his sons. "It seems that my sons are long overdue for another excursion. One of study and practice for all future rulers."

Thor beamed. "Us? Down to Midgard? It's been centuries. What say you Loki?"

"I could use some added amusement," said Loki. "And Midgardians have never disappointed in that regard, I suppose."

"Then it is decided," said Odin, rising to strike the ground with his great spear, Gungnir. "Thor. Loki. With my blessing, you may take any weapon from the armory of Asgard, form a band from any hero you deem worthy enough to stand alongside you. Find the point of the fog and tear it down. Such is the wish of the Allfather. So speaks Odin, son of Bor." And from his words gave rise to a roaring cheer as a thousand swords pierced the air. ...  
 _A/N: Ok, so the next few interludes should come tumbling out one after another. They're all pretty short, hovering around one to two scenes each with a few central characters serving as the focus that are meant to set up the key players for the next arc. I anticipate one/two chapter updates a day or so if nothing gets in the way._

 _Take into account that this is way, way, way, way before Thor the movie. Which means this around four decades before Loki finally got jealous enough to try to depose of his brother through trickery. On top of that, even in the first one, its quite obvious that beyond the jealousy, Loki still cared for his brother quite deeply. It's only the revelation that his parentage was a lie coupled with his severe insecurity that sent him screaming past the deep end. On Thor's end, its never be a question if he loves his brother. It's the most obvious thing in the universe. Sure he dudebros around his brother and generally acts like a jumped up frat boy. But he is a heroic frat boy. That cares for his brother. And values his assistance._

 _Heimdall seeing everything isn't much of conundrum for Doom since part of his enchantments and inventions-both demonstrated and assumed-have been to shield him from external sight. Doom is no stranger to being observed, from his bargain with Mephisto to 616 Thanos watching him to needing to counter whatever SHIELD satellite or Skrull plot happening this week. However, this doesn't mean that Heimdall is completely stymied. It's just a blurry fog to him. His senses are near-omniscent. Even if he couldn't see anything, that just would've meant that the situation could potentially be even more alarming since the number of things that Heimdall can't see can be listed on a hand. Unless the plot blinds him._

 _You guys are probably going to like the line-up of players coming into Winter's End. There's going to be spies, super soldiers, a sorcerer, gods, and a few geniuses and a half._


	11. Interlude: Winter 2-02

_2.02  
_ She breathed and existence breathed with her.

It breathed within her, beside her, beyond her. It breathed as it bathed her in its light, as it wrapped her in its embrace, as it coiled in the darkest shadows that turned to cinders at the touch of light.

Letting out her breath, the Ancient One opened her third eye and rose into the astral. Gazing upon the material vessel of her own body as it sat cross-legged, she shook her head.

 _My agelessness is not immortality,_ her mind chanted. _My agelessness is not immortality._

She rose, rising beyond the ascetic wooden furnishings that composed Kamar-Taj, through the barriers of solid matter that allowed her to behold the bustling streets of Nepal, place aglow with the auras of the busy bodies, the symphony of the city playing its odes as everything danced to its own rhythm. A small serene smile filled her heart. Too long spent beholding the wonders and splendors of the vaster dimensions beyond this one was to deny oneself of the beauty of simplicity. Order flowed here. Lives were spent between these blocks of stone and glass, by the seconds by people all to similar to herself in matter and essence.

She drew in the sights, recentering herself but never lingering.

Across the span of a million leagues, past the expanse of space and satellites she rose, spectral butterflies of glass fluttering along side her. Striding distances unfathomable on particles light, each mote bursting into a kaleidoscopic lotus to mark her path, she approached the edge of the Milky Way galaxy and leaped. The last lotus turned to a bouncing pad as she dove into a wormhole, time and space becoming irrelevant as she spun into Andromeda in the same moment.

Soaring over Xandar, she watched the Nova Corps rising into the atmosphere, their peacekeepers speeding past her to defend their charges and uphold justice. Twelve billion souls shone brighter than the traffic lanes of the mega-cities pusling with life on the surface. Grand structures touching the base of clouds stood testament to the glories of what could be achieved by society and technology. And they did so without trading the life of their planet to boost the power of their people. Glorious waters of blue lapped at the bases of great structures, beings soaring above the waves on sail-packs and boosters.

One must not forget the glories beyond that which sits before them. As some spend their lives in the of meters, others can only be measured in the leagues of light.

Stepping sideways to another place entirely, existence flipped over as the Ancient One re-oriented herself past the veil of another dimension.

Her features hardened as she gazed upon a face of entropy and ruin, its cruel eyes pools of glowering purple. Dormammu. Dread Lord of the Dark Dimension.

One must never forget the horrors that existed beyond the veil of comfort as well. Lest one find themselves incapable of guarding their own existence.

"I knew you would come here eventually. The hard part was just getting the _when_ part of it down. Which is hard when _when_ doesn't follow its usual rules. Thankfully. I had help."

The Ancient One nearly snapped back into her own body. Suddenly feeling the presence of another beside her in this place beyond, she turned.

He sat there, waiting for her on a stool of tessellating fractals. Sharped pointed features with streaks of white running through the sides of his hair, tinging of a bit of his goatee as well. Dark blue robes fastened tight to his body with thick belts. A cape of red-the cape of levitation it did so resemble-flapping behind him as he hovered. At his chest, a horrifying familiar pendant opened, the energies seeping from its green eyes surrounding the man with motes of energy. He was a sorcerer much like herself. She could feel the sorcerous energies flowing through him, the universal, personal. And the extra-dimensional. Dark Dimensional.

Fiery mandalas of light formed around her fists astral form as she readied herself. He simply held up his hands. "Startling as my intrusion may be, I'm not your foe. Not even close."

"Then clarity will serve as your ally," she said, keeping her weapons in place. "Tell me who you are and we may begin this conversation, as friends."

A sorrowful smile flashed across his face. "I-You'll come to know me as Dr. Stephen Strange in my time. If my time comes again. If I emerge as the same person that exists before at this moment in time."

His body flickered momentarily. She could feel his existence unraveling, fading to nothing between the seconds. The only thing keeping him from disintegrating entirely was the amulet. No. Its power was unmistakable. The Eye of Agamoto.

"How do you possess the-"

"I haven't yet," he said. "I will in the future. A future. After you're gone."

After she was gone? A cloud of anxiety filled the Ancient One's heart. She had portents of that moment. Gazed upon in lucidity and dreams. It was like a murky fog to her, clearly coming but never clear when. If this Strange spoke the truth, then that would likely make him the Master of the Mystic after her. No other being would have the capacity to compel the Eye.

Her mandalas dissipating she studied him with but a moment of focus. His was an aura tinged with fear, with strain. The spells that he wove were in haste. Half-finished. Of a detriment to his body and soul. She could felt his effort slipping as the flickers came and went. It wouldn't be long. "You know that your spell will end with your demise."

"As do all paths, I'm afraid," he said. "By snap or blade, my fate is sealed in my time. But not in yours."

"Defying the laws of time is beyond egregious, Strange," said the Ancient One. "But I am certain you know this."

He gave a slight sideways shrug. "More than most. But there was no other way. In every path of my present, we fell in the future. Doom, Hell, or the Titan."

With a flourish of light, three realities flashed into behind Strange as the Dark Dimension faded to the void.

In one, a caped figure in tin armor sat upon a throne of corpses, a golden gauntlet aglitter with five gems as unnatural power spilled out from the viridescent sockets of his mask.

In another, existence pulsated with tumors and cancers that swallowed galaxies and reached further, spreading through a gaping wound in the sky towards other universes like winds of plague.

In the final, a broken figure knelt amidst a dead universe, the last living being left in a broken existence as he waited for his end to come.

"What is this," said the Ancient One, the magnitude of each reality making themselves known to her. "How could this have happened?"

"By the simple intrusion of one man," said Strange. All realities except that tin tyrant faded. "Dr. Doom."

The Ancient One found herself face to face with the manifestation of Doom. Even through this veil of space and time, his future bled through like the light of dawn. "How."

"No one knows," said Strange. "Not even the Doctor himself. In the realities that we fought together, I asked him. He told me much. And nothing at all."

The image of Doom changed to a perplexing horizon. It looked as if she was looking at a medieval city built on the foundations of the union of sorcery and technology, of rustic environments but impossible machines, where men and women rode across the skies on steeds of steel and plasma, where a towering castle looked down across a city of glass and chrome. At the highest keep, Doom looked down, arms crossed as he rose into the air. Beside him a pre-teen girl hovered alongside him as the holographic face of an older man speaking to them both.

"This is Latveria," said Strange. "Will be. It hasn't been finished yet. In your current time its still mostly in ruins. By the end of this week, that will no longer be the case."

"How?"

Strange sighed. "Because he would have fixed and finished building his new capital by then. Doomstadt." The last word came from Strange's lips as if he were ashamed of saying it.

The Ancient One blinked. "Did he name a city after himself."

"He named most the nation after himself," Strange said, deadpan. "Earth too, in the realities that he won."

An eyebrow rose. "Doomworld?" asked the Ancient One.

Strange nodded.

"So, he's arrogant," said the Ancient One.

"Only on a good day," smirked Strange. The expression of joy faded as fractures began to spread from his fingers across his body. "I don't have long. You need to go to Latveria. There will be a ceremony at the end of this month. Meet him. Guide him-"

A wail of something tearing into the astral screamed at the Ancient One, clawing at her mind. It felt like centipedes burrowing against her skin, burning as they sank into her flesh.

"I've taken too long," said Strange, expression holding back muted terror. "I've hoped that I would fade before she could find me but that seems to be-"

A blade of pure darkness punched through Strange's chest, his words died in a startled gasp. Astral essence speckled the Ancient One's shocked face as Strange gasped as he rose, lifted by the sword of the intruder that stepped from the void, clad in plates of runic black with a pool of midnight for a face. In her left hand, she clutched a glowing gem of yellow, its energies clashing against that of Agamoto's green. " _You cannot escape me, Sorcerer. None, can escape me."_

"I know," said Strange, glaring back down at her with defiant eyes. "But I did what I needed to do."

Light flared from Strange's fingers as an eldritch whip formed. Curving the sparking whip through the expanse, it spun in circles as it lassoed him to his murder, blade sinking deeper and deeper into him.

"Go to Latveria," said Strange, weaving one final spell as time began to collapse around him and his adversary. "Keep Doom from the darker path. Keep the girl alive at all costs. _Latveria must survive."_ Giving her a final smile, even as his adversary twisted her blade. "It was good to see you, one last time."

Slamming both his hands together as the ultimate spell of his existence came to its final culmination, time burst into fractals as existence around him shattered into broken pieces. Tiny mirror butterflies fluttered in the void, the only evidence that Strange was ever even there. The astral dimension expanded like a rubber band pulled too far and snapped back into place. The repulse washed over the Ancient One like a tidal wave, casting her across the expanse of the astral, through planets and realms of darkness, back into the atmosphere of Earth, back into her own in Kamar-Taj.

She gasped. Breathes coming in harried gasps as her heart pounded like a hammer. Sweat was pouring from her shaved head. Her robes were soaked with sweat. Swallowing, the Ancient One felt something tickle on her cheek as the wind brushed her face. She brushed the spot with a finger.

On her fingertip, his blood remained. ...  
 _A/N: Future Strange gets merc'd but, as Strange does, he manages to cast a light into the past. For all the MCU's limitations and nerfing of some characters, the Mages ended being the most intact in some regard. Unless you are comparing them to classic Strange, who is basically silver age Superman for existence. The MCU mages tend to specialize high spatial mid entropic and low force applications of their powers on a standard. Comparing them to the 616 standard, I would say that they would be out of luck in a direct fight but with the way that most writers protray mages in 616-basically, a universal standard pack which gives you blasting and easily allows the writer to scale you to the plot-they would lose. Consistently. The ever-expanding path of space would deny any of their fundamental forces the travel needed to crush the mage they are fighting. Likewise, they would probably be crushed whole by the mirror dimension folding them._

 _Now, Doom and Strange in 616 are different animals than the standard caster. As is 616 Wanda, Voodoo, Wiccan, and the few other names that have some staying power. Their abilities to deal with space and outright distort it makes any battle between Dr. Doom and an MCU mage two OCPs trying to confuse each other to death. The game here is to crush Doom within their own alien geometries before he can break the spell while his is to just teleport them over, but inside out. One thigns for sure, its going to be interesting to write what basically amounts to a meta-physical conflict on acid. Don't write out the Ancient One just because her durability is very, very squishy. If she does her job right, the blows just don't come close to hitting her._

 _Of course, her task here isn't so much that she has to fight Doom as it is to meet him. Which, in a roundabout way may result in a fight anyway. Wait and see._


	12. Interlude: Winter 2-03

_2.03_  
The flesh within his cheek burned. It was the sort of pain that one felt when the cold set in and suffused into their flesh when the bones turned to ice and the blood wouldn't flow.

Ignoring the pain, Doom continued to work on his final project without pause.

He had banished himself from the eyes of the public after he made arrangements for the resurrection of his Latverian state and for his upcoming coronation. Though his victory came true and complete, there was a part of Doom that bubbled with bitterness and fury.

He had Latveria.

But he had lost the battle.

He had been broken before another again.

And she had peeked into his innermost thoughts and escaped intact.

She wasn't his mother. She looked like her, acted like her, had her touch but she _was not his mother._ She could barely be considered the girl's mother by her neglect and disregard for her existence all these years. What's more, she acts as a consort of Hell. Or worse, a ruler of it. In their battle, as he thought her best, the energies of the Hellish dimension filled her at a thought. Which meant that it was more than likely she was one of Mephisto's lieutenants in this universe. That would be a cruel mockery of his past, intentional or not.

The fact remains, he was beaten, surviving on the whims of her curiosity rather than his ability.

This cannot be accepted.

For two days and two nights, he rebuilt his armor, repairing what could be fixed and replacing what was lost. In time, when he had better materials and an opportunity to redesign, he would need to upgrade his systems. To boost his internal batteries and enchantments. Her power was based solely on sorcery, as he had felt when he severed the ley lines within her armor. His victory was more likely to come from his master of both, but especially technology. She knew nothing of the realm of science. That will be her undoing.

His new helmet levitated before him, reflecting the image of a pallid boy shivering beyond his ability to control. Doom glared at the pale creature with loathing. The image faded away until the man he was cast the sight of the broken child out of his mind.

Soon, he would wear his true face again. And this time, on his face it would stay. He made sure of that.

Taking the helmet into his hands, it unfurled open into a kaleidoscopic bloom of metal petals that reached out to embrace his face. A new function of techno-magic so that the vacuum seals weren't the only thing connecting his helmet to his armor. Endless litanies of wards and enchantments were woven into the insides of the mask. Mystically reinforced carbon nanofibers forming the substructure to give the helmet more support. Twin-layered visors shielded the slants of his eyes better than ever before, an external layer capable of proving additional defenses in situations that demanded it. Shifting several times, Doom tested the external lenses as he acclaimed himself to the feeling of the new armor.

Beneath this new shell of mental and physical shielding, Doom felt warm flood back into his scar.

He was whole again.

Neural link reconnecting to the synaptic nerves within his brain, his HUD booted as his sight returned to him and his parochial eyes were widened again. Brightness flooded shadow as his HUD adjusted for darkness and cycled through vision modes, scanning through the entire facility as helmet sent pulsing waves of echoes to highlight the world around him.

Thirteen layers already built with several hundred more still in the processes of being excavated, this facility lay beneath within the mines of prison that he first liberated upon his arrival. The lines already ran deep into the Earth and Doom was never one to waste his efforts. Currently, the floor he was on was meant to hold and test for more _exotic_ subjects and specimens.

A few blocks over, in a chamber specifically meant for it alone, the Darkhold page was sealed from the world within a double layered pocket dimension of Doom's own making, three layers of force fields, a blood ward constantly alternating between random individuals that have donated their blood to the cause of Doom, and a ten-inch square cell of reinforced titanium. Doom reminded himself to touch upon that rush job later. Though the dimensional scar in the middle of the page still bled energy sometimes, it had been reasonably stable in the last two days.

" _Hiding behind more armor, Victor?"_ asked Richards. The voiced formed as if the man was standing righ next to him, judging his work as if he knew better. As if he knew what it was like to face the powers of Hell. " _Normally I would tell you that this isn't the way, that there's another solution to the problem beyond building walls between you and the world. But in this case, I suppose I must concur with you. More armor would be immensely helpful when you have to face her again. You're probably going to want_

 _"_ Be silent," said Doom.

 _"Easy. Stop thinking about me."_ The words came as a taunt, as echoes of mockery that struck at him, his wound flaring with frost under this new barrage. " _But you can't, can you Victor? You just can't function right knowing that I'm not there with you for you to obsess over, that this might not even be me altering your mind but a pathological disorder of your own account. And knowing that you are so very, very failable, as mommy dearest showed you earlier, well, I'd say you should consider getting a therapist. Maybe the girl can fix you? Or maybe you'll just end up getting her killed. Or killing her yourself. Tends to happen to everyone and everything you hold dear, doesn't it?"  
_  
"Be silent," said Doom,

" _Be better, then,"_ said Reed.

"Doom," said Valeria, walking into the chamber.

"Be silent!"

She froze in her tracks. Blinking. "Is this some kind of sudden test again? You want me to scry for something invisible?"

"No," said Doom. She was here. Why was she here?

"Then what where you doing arguing with yourself?"

"Why do you disturb me?" said Doom, ignoring her question with one of his own. "I recall ordering you never to interrupt me for these two days."

She rolled her eyes.

"Anyway, your-" She snickered. "- _Doombots..._ brought that oversized old Nazi plane in through the portal on the lower. They're also defrosting some guy in a block of ice. When grandpa saw who it was, he yelled 'fuck my ass raw' and ran off to go oversee the process. Figured you would want to come along and see your Commander fall in love with the ice man or whoever he is."

Ah. The Captain was about to begin his defrosting process. Ever since one of his drones began mapping the world a few weeks ago, he has known the location of the _Valkyrie,_ and with it, the location of the sleeping American icon. For much of the war, he had postponed his retrieval of the Captain from his slumber due to circumstances of the war. Now, especially considering how important that Captain was to be for his future plans, obtaining both Captain and a sample of his blood was the top priority.

"Good," said Doom. Readying his teleportation spell, he ushered Valeria to step in close.

Space cracked around them as they fell between places. ...  
This.

This was history being forged before him. And Boris was a part of it.

The ice was clear and thin enough that he could see the man within. The edges of the shield- _the shield that killed fascists-_ protruded from the ice as Boris felt his mouth water. Not a scratch on its surface. Not a dent or rent or even a stain. He wondered how it would feel to hold it in his hands.

Then he realized, he could. "Stupid machines," said Boris, calling out to the Doombot currently melting the ice with their heating beams. "One of you bring me shield. I want to feel it in my hands."

Complying with his order, a Doombot broke away the last bit of ice holding onto the shield as it flew over and offered the shield to Boris.

Red, white, blue and with a star in the middle, Boris felt the lightness of the legendary weapon weigh far less than he would have expected it too. Over the course of his life, Boris had felt metal, know their touch, and learned the weight of weapons. But with what he was holding, he could certainly say that he had no idea what materials composed the making of the shield.

Lowering the symbol, Boris looked back at the icon. He was suspended by ice no more than an inch thick now. His features were resolute, determination scrawled on his face even in unconsciousness. He looked the same as Boris could remember him looking that day when he came to Russia with the rest of the Howling Commandos. He only saw them from afar, through half-starved eyes looking at a rising tide of smoke but there was no doubt in his mind that this was _the_ Captain Rogers that saved him and a thousand others from certain death in his secret operations.

A slight giddiness bubbled through Boris as he giggled. He felt like a young man again.

Then the Doombot's suddenly stopped melting the ice block.

"Why you stop?" asked Boris, annoyed "He still trapped? Free him."

" _We are not to commence further operations until the master arrives."  
_  
On cue, space fractured. Valeria stepped out in front of Doom nonchalantly as she tilted her head at the frozen man.

"That him?" she asked her grandfather. "The one you tell the same story about over and over again? The one where he fights off a hundred men alone in a Russian blizzard to save you from a Hydra tank division?"

"Yes," breathed Boris. "Valeria, this, _this_ is the Captain. The Captain America. The greatest fascist killer of all time."

Valeria meanwhile found herself growing more and more interested in his chiseled features. The uniform was composed of carbon polymer but the Captain was enhanced enough it clung to his body like latex. His hard rippling musculature pressed through the fabric to give Valeria a good idea of just how _fit_ the Captain was. "His jaw is like... he's... he's Doom," she said, shooting him the sweetest look that she had, "You can clone people right?"

"Yes," said Doom. Her face brightened.

"But no," continued Doom. "I will not grow you a clone of the Captain so that you may indulge in lurid fantasies that detract from proper focus."

"But Doom," said Valeria. "I'm a growing girl! With growing needs!"

"Then you will get your nutrition and nothing more," said Doom, stepping past her as she sulked.

 _Fine,_ thought Valeria as a smirk spread across her face. _I'll do it myself_

"Master," said a Doombot. "Permission to engage revitalization process."  
 _  
"_ Wake him." ...  
 _Deep inside, they both knew that there was no way out for him._

 _"Alright. A week, next Saturday at the Stork Club." She played along with him. Lying to him. Lying to herself as they savored what little time they had left._

 _"You got it," he replied. It was an empty promise. But he had to make it. He couldn't let Peggy down._

 _He didn't have the heart._

 _"Eight o'clock on the dot. Don't you dare be late. Understood?" It was a miracle how she could still be so demanding even in a time like this. Suppose that was part of the reason why he fell for her._

 _"You know," he said, slightly ashamed even in these final moments. "I still don't know how to dance."_

 _"I'll show you how," she said. He could hear the pain coming into her voice. The dream was breaking in the face of what was to come. The continent of ice was coming at him fast. And there was nowhere else to go._

 _"Just be there."_

 _Peggy.  
_  
"Drawing a sample of subject's genetic material," said a voice. Time froze. _Peggy?_

"Injecting stimulant into subject's bloodstream. Taking effect in three... two... one."

Captain Steven "Captain America" Rogers woke with a startled gasp, heart accelerated forcefully by a shot of adrenaline, chest racing as blood surged through him. Three seconds later, his heart rate had normalized as the foreign agent was neutralized within his blood stream.

The super soldier serum was still in him.

The lights here were blinding. He blinked furiously. Daggers of brightness stabbed at his sight as through the shroud of light, the silhouette of single figure drew closer and urged him to stay calm

"Is okay," said Boris. "Is okay! Breath Captain Rogers. Deep breaths. In. Out."

The light began to fade as Steve Rogers' sight acclimated at a pace that could only be described as extraordinary. The serum within him had done more than merely given him good vision. It had granted him the ability to recover faster than any normal man as well. The light was beginning to recede, the room before him a separation between light and dark as he began scanning his environment on instinct. The chamber he was in was vast and large with unfathomable machines pumping and humming with power all around him.

Glowing batteries cells of fusion energy bathed parts of shadow with pale viridescent light, highlighting the frames of dormant mechanical humanoids that stood on watch, impassive and silent, the glow of their eyes and faces the thing of nightmares.

Trying to move, the Captain grunted as he struggled against what felt to be a strong repulsive force holding him in place as if he was submerged in a body of hyper-friction liquid. "Where am I?"

Boris sighed. "That is... going to take very long explanation. Let's just say you are somewhere in Latveria. You are currently in stasis field."

 _Latveria? Where is Latveria? What is Latveria? Stasis field?  
_  
The Captain continued looking around, noting the additional super-tech around him with growing suspicion and mistaken certitude on his own part. "Are you with Hydra?"

Boris was about to answer when he was interrupted.

"Please, Captain Rogers. Do not mock me by comparing my creations to the base banalities born from their insipid little minds." As if by his will, the rest of Steve's vision clear and he found himself faced with the speaker. Green cloak wavering in the air as he rose to meet Rogers face to mask, Doom locked eyes with the Captain as they tried to match wills and comprehend the other better. "Doom is far beyond the rank amateurs that comprise the soul of Hydra."

Rogers met his glare unflinching, without a blink. On his face was not fear, nor hate, nor anything of the sort. Will. They were men of sheer will. That much was similar between him and Doom. To a lesser extent of course. It was also just what the Doctor thought he needed.

 _Good,_ Doom thought. _Defiant as I hoped he would be. Unbroken in body or spirit. Steve Rogers remains a constant through the multiverse, his presence as unflinching as his shield._

 _It will serve me nicely.  
_  
With a casual gesture, Doom deactivated the gravity field. Captain America dropped to his feet.

"Here," said Boris, holding out his shield. "A sign of trust. Fascists would never offer you weapon back, _da?"  
_  
Taking his shield back from the smiling balding Russian man dressed in an open military jacket, Captain America looked at Boris, then at Doom, and finally-and strangely-and the young girl who looked to be ogling him with rapacious eyes.

Landing beside him, the towering tin tyrant looked down at the Captain and, with another casual wave, opened another portal.

Tensing suddenly at the fracturing of spatial reality before him, the shield came up on reflex.

"Come," said Doom, placing a finger on the shield. "There is no need to fear. Follow along, Captain."

As the one who called himself Doom walked away from him, towards the open portal, Captain America held still, the world rushing at him from too many places, with too many unanswered questions, mind flooding with more questions than answers.

"Doom," said Captain America. "Am I a prisoner?"

Doom stopped. He turned his head ever so slightly. "I hope you can continue being my guest."

Mind racing with possibilities and potential paths of escape within a mind operating at speed only made possible the serum, Captain America noted the Doombots surrounding him in the shadows as he heard them move in the darkness, flying and flashing of lights giving their positions away as he considered his options.

Fists tightening briefly, Captain America released his tension and slung his shield over his shoulder. He didn't know the capabilities of these Doombots. Or that of his _host._ It would do him any good to get killed without reason.

"Where are we going?" asked Steve.

"Breakfast," said Doom, no longer looking back. "I imagine that after thirty-three years of slumber, one must have built up quite the appetite."

"Wait," said Steve, stopping in his tracks again. " _Thirty-three_ years?"

A hand patted him on the shoulder. Boris shook his head. "Best to have breakfast first. Usually easier to stress-vomit afterward if there is food inside you." ...

 _A/N: Okay. Only three more interludes to go. Should be able to get them up by tomorrow. Latest in two days._

 _Now the way I work my interludes is mainly to set up the key players for the next arc. It isn't just about developments happening in the interim between the big plot moments but also snapshots into the minds and emotions that the key players are experiencing at the start of their journies so they can have a development arc of their own. Basically, think of each interlude as its own self-contained primer moment for every character that has been graced with passing focus. Getting the mystical and the mythical done first was meant to not dilute the taste of espionage and humanity that is to follow._

 _And speaking of following, it's been a while for Peggy Carter as well, hasn't it?_

 _Last I checked, by this point in time in the MCU, she was running things pretty high up in the operations of SHIELD._

 _She was also married. With kids._

 _But her heart... it never quite moved on past Steve, did it?_

 _God, I love it when things get complicated. It's going to be so much fun when this plot kicks down her door._

 _Additional note: I was strongly tempted to put "How is Latveria?" during Captain Roger's awakening. I-I killed that referential moment for the sake of the story. I do what I must._


End file.
